Post IR Editing

Hi, my name is David. I am an infrared Photographer from Austria, and in this article I will explain you the basic steps for processing infraed photography taken with the 550nm filter. This specific filter has a lot of creative advantages compared to higher cutting longpass filters, but also some disadvantages that you will have to keep i...

You’ve heard that white balance is important for getting good results in infrared photography. Most cameras you can just set this in camera, and it gives you nice photos that are ready to use. Sometimes though, the camera’s white balance range is too narrow for IR, and trying to set a white balance just gives you an error and leaves y...

Tutorial courtesy of Dean Frate To start working on an infrared image, open the camera raw image in a format that can handle manipulation without introducing artifacts. Here, I’ll use Adobe RGB 16b color space (wiki). For some applications, I prefer to useProPhoto RGB color space (wiki), but in this case it gives unwanted color shift...

Tutorial courtesy of Dean Frate The angle that the camera is held at, the barrel or pincushion characteristics of the lens, and the chromatic separation inherent to the lens and the wavelengths allowed to hit the sensor all contribute to image distortion.  With infrared these issues can be more pronounced, since most lenses aren't des...

GIMP is a freely distributed photo editing software that has all the necessary tools for false color post processing of infrared images. This is a great alternative if you don’t want to spend a lot on Photoshop, and will produce just as good results. First start with the basic image from the camera. If you set a white balance prior t...

Download the False Color Action Suite Here! (install instructions for actions can be found here) Contents This suite is comprised of 5 actions, the standard channel swap, a channel swap that only keeps the blue color, a 665 to 720nm action, a 590nm to 665nm action, and a 590 to 720nm action. All actions are meant to be run on the pi...

590 and 665 filters are quite versatile. They allow you to shoot more vibrant colors than with the 720nm filter, and can also produce quite yellow leaves. Another feature of these filters, is that it can produce good colors in some situations when the 720nm would produce dull results. We are going to start with a picture taken with a 665...

Download Installing and Using the False Color Action Above is a false color automated action for Photoshop that will automatically switch the red and blue channels as well as some basic image enhancement to create the blue sky effect. Save this action onto your computer, it can be on your documents, the Adobe folder in the programs f...

Everyone who has tried infrared photography is disappointed at first that no camera takes those blue skied infrared photos directly. Rather, you get a less spectacular red picture that has to be worked on to produce lovely false colors. I’m going to show you how to go from this: To this: First, you should set a cu...