Ocular aberrations are corrected, typically for purposes of imaging the eye or perfonning visual studies, by controlling a correction device, such as deformable mirror or liquid crystal light modulator, with a 'wavefront sensorless' method that does not use or require a wavefront measurement device. This wavefront sensorless method uses optimization methods to directly control the correcting device to result in the best optical quality as determined by a suitable metric based on light exiting the eye. The method can also be applied to the measurement and calibration of 'non-common path errors' inherent in adaptive optics systems.