Simple checklist for IR Take picture and import into computer You will have a red image Convert to B&W by your favorite process Finished But if you happen to be someone with a conversion camera and you want to see more that you can achieve, see below Before we begin, do you have Photoshop (PS) or Gimp installed or a program that will allow you to swap the red and blue channels? I saw today on YouTube that you can find a free channel mixer plugin for Photoshop elements that will allow you to swap the red and blue channels, like in the full version of Photoshop. This is a stopping point as you can t do this in Lightroom or ACR. Also I m not teaching Photoshop in this tutorial and I assume a basic understanding of adjustments and layers Nope I don t expect much. My checklist/process for IR 1. Set custom White Balance (WB) before shooting 2. Shoot your images whether single shots or for HDR 3. Import into DPP or NX2 or as a last resort Adobe ACR 4. Make corrections to WB, contrast and anything that makes you happy 5. Export the Jpegs to folder on hard drive 6. Import image/s to Photoshop 7. Add channel mixer adjustment layer-swap red and blue channels 8. Add levels adjustment layer 9. If desired, add a hue/saturation adjustment layer to taste *note if shooting B&W you can tone the image in this step. 10. Done or open the image in any other third party software program to achieve your artistic vision! These steps explained in more detail. 1. First, I set a custom white balance in my camera. Get your manual out and see how you set a custom WB. I have to find a white object (or have a gray card) to shoot. I am usually driving a white sedan, so I get out and snap the 1st shot of the day, of my car (or anything white or green if shooting IR) that is in the same light conditions as what you are shooting. Now, I find the custom WB setting in my camera menu and select the image I just shot and now all the rest of this photo sessions images will be using this custom WB. If you are shooting RAW, it's easy to change it later and yes I always shoot RAW.
2. Chimp the shot and the camera LCD will show, as in my case, blue/white foliage and dark sky, in the LCD. But as soon as you import this into Photoshop/Lightroom/Bridge to do a white balance, you will have a red image. Why? (view the long version video here) but basically Adobe products don't have the range to deal with the IR color range in infra-red images. Although I can make a decent work of correcting the WB in Adobe ACR it comes out better with the DPP software (IMHO). This image is before it is imported into LR. It s just showing my images on the card and shows them the way we d like them to come in to LR or PS. For getting it into your computer you can import via LR or you can just copy your card to a folder on the computer, whatever works for you. Open in PS or LR and Convert to B&W and you are done... But here is where I try to get creative. 3. Since I have a Canon, I FIRST import into Canon Digital Photo Pro (DPP) software which comes with most new Canon cameras. If you have a Nikon then use your Nikon NX2 software and if you have something else see what came in the box for software. If they don t have some proprietary software then you might have to ask the company what to use. You can watch these videos for more info on why this works best.
I am following the video tutorials on the LifePixel website so if, at any time I confuse you, hit the link for their site and watch their videos a few times, (I did) and then come back. 4. OK! I set my IR image s white balance and then I make corrections for each image in the DPP software, as I feel the image needs, just as if I was processing a normal image. Contrast and highlights and shadows are usually muted. If you think it s still dull then wait till the next steps.
5. Export the Jpeg to a folder on your computer. I usually nest my folder for each software change under one session folder. Raw images in the upper folder, then the DPP exported Jpegs in one subfolder and down below that will be my Photoshop modified images (and LightRoom, and HDR, Etc ) 6. Bring the DPP images into Photoshop This assumes you are using Photoshop. If you are using another program like gimp then proceed how you see fit. There are other programs to do these steps but I don t have them. 7. For color images you will be swapping the red and blue color channels. If you want to create an action for this, this would be a good time to do so. Don t know how? Watch this video on youtube on creating a PS action. I learned for free, many of my techniques on youtube Channel swapping involves opening a channel mixer adjustment layer. As with everything in Adobe there are multiple ways of doing this. Go to the menu at the top of the page and click, image, Adjustment, channel mixer. A window will open up saying wait for it channel mixer. Depending on how you want to do this it could look different. If you use the above method to bring it up you will only make a one time change. If you have a newer version of PS you can open the adjustment panel and click channel mixer and it will add a channel mixer layer which you can open back up at any time (unlike,image, adjustments, channel mixer which is a onetime change). The both do the same thing though but look a little different. The channel mixer has a pull down box that says: output channel which will normally say red (if you are doing several of these it may say blue from the last one you did.
BUT! For arguments sake click the pull down for the red option. Now red is at 100% and blue at 0% we will reverse these so red is 0% and blue is 100% Now click the output and choose the blue channel. The blue channel will be at 100% and the red at 0% so we will reverse them like in the previous step. Close the channel mixer. 8. You have the option to open the levels adjustment and bring the white slider to the left a little or to taste. Then bring the black slider to the right to taste and then the grey middle slider will adjust your contrast in the mid-range. As you can see in the image below, compared to the previous images, once you get the image into Photoshop and start making the adjustments, it will start to come alive. The levels adjustment can really give it some depth. You can also use the eye droppers that to the left of the histogram to select different parts of the image to affect with the sliders. Be careful though as this can go wrong and you may have to go into your histories to go back several steps to reset it to pre-changes and try something else.
9. Now you can open a hue/saturation adjustment layer and this is where it applies to those who only have a B&W conversion. You can choose to colorize the image to a toned image. *note, you can get very good tone adjustment (duo and triple toned images in Lightroom) but this is one more method.
10. Now you can save your masterpiece and perhaps open it in another program to achieve more artistic embellishments that will suit your mood. These are fairly common steps and you can find a lot of tutorials on YouTube that will go over this in various levels of accuracy. It s up to your artistic temperament as to how far you take them. I see a lot of far out images but it s the ones that have a good clarity of subject from the background that catch my eye. Just like in a regular photograph, if you don t have a strong sense of composition with a good focus element (a strong subject) then it will be a weak image. (Yes I would call the image above a weak image) Good photography is simply good photography no matter the technique used to achieve your artistic vision.. Jeff Folger Vistaphotography