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.
The white balance for the standard camera profiles is too warm which is why the raw files look pink and red when opened in photoshop or lightroom.
This is fixed in the jpeg by setting the custom white balance (pointing it at grass)
but in order to get a similar looking image in photoshop, you need to set up a custom profile for your camera (unless you are editing the jpeg or a tiff export from lightroom)
Click here to see how to create a custom profile
the trick with the raw file is to get a nicely saturated image, make sure any blues are light blue and yellows are yellow if you want to make vivid images after the processing.
Step 1: open up the raw file in Photoshop, set the camera profile to your custom profile, this should give you an image resembling the jpeg file, set the curve point to "strong contrast"
bump up the saturation a bit to bring out the colours.
The more colours you can extract from within the RAW processor, the better the swapped image will be. Once you have an image workflow that works for you then save it as a raw preset that you can use as a base for any new images.
Step 2: once you are happy with the sharpness and colour base of the raw image open it up as an image
infra red raw file with custom profile
infra red raw file with custom profile and raw processing
infra red colour swapped jpeg
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. and are dependent on the image that you start out with
The lower end of the spectrum - around 655nm will give you red skies with green foliage, as you get higher, the sky will be more orange and the foliage will be bluer
The images that i get on my Canon (with 720nm filter) come out with orange sunset skies and blue foliage.
the images i get from the Nikon (with 655nm filter) come out as green foliage with red skies
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 oranges to more of a yellow colour for example
Step 3: 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
