Infra red workflow is dependent on the image that you start with, tweeks will need to be done to this but this workflow
will give you a base with which to play around with the settings
these are all done using Photoshop adjustment layers, these are available on the psd file which you can download here.
for other versions of Photoshop and other programs can be followed using standard adjustments.
Step 1: open up the raw file in Photoshop, if you havent created a custom profile for your camera then do this now as you will need this for photoshop raw processing as well.
(unless you are opening up an edit file from Lightroom)
Step 2: once you are happy with the sharpness and colour base of the raw image open it up as an image
Colour Swapping and processing
There is no right or wrong way to do colour processing of Infra red images, this is all down to personal preference and
based on the image in question.
The images that i get on my Canon (with R72 filter) come out with orange sunset skies and blue foliage which has grown on me immensly and with these images
i tend to keep them as they are now, colour swapping them makes the sky blue and the foliage orange which some people prefer
Canon Raw, colour swapped
the images i get from the Nikon (R65 converted) come out as green foliage with red skies so i think these look better as colour swapped which makes the sky dark blue and the foliage yellow,
these images also work well as black and white
to swap the colours on your image, this takes the red and blue channels and swaps them over so red becomes blue and blue becomes red
depending on the starting image it will take the red/orange hues and change them to blue and change any green/blue hues to yellow/orange
when you open up the "Channel Swap" either as an adjustment layer or a standard layer adjustment the levels
for each individual colour will be at 100, for the red colour move the red slider to 0 and the blue slider to 100
on the blue colour, do the opposite so set the blue slider to 0 and the red slider to 100
this should give you the starting of the colour swapped image but adjust the colour sliders until you are happy with the result.
you can use Hue/Saturation to fine tune any specific colour, to change the yellows to orange for example
Step 4: curves and contrast. This is just a case of adjusting the contrast and curves on a per image basis to get the desired effect on your image.
Some more of my Infra Red images can be seen
Here
Email me at
darren@tripleoptics.net if you have any questions or comments
