ADVANCED COLOR PROCESSING TECHNIQUES

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 665nm filter.

Running our basic channel swap action on this picture will produce an image like this:

In some situations, it is possible to take this image and make it look closer to the 590nm effect.

This can be done by going to Image – Adjustments – Hue and Saturation. Once there, you can increase the saturation of the yellows to taste, and adjust the saturation and hue of the blues. After you’ve done that, it is possible to get something like this:

It’s important to be careful when adjusting hue and saturation, pushing the values can quickly add noise to the image.

665nm to 720nm Adjustments

If you prefer the look of white leaves over yellow leaves, it is possible to make the 665nm image look like the 720nm version.

To do this, you can run our 665nm to 720nm action, or do it manually. The result will look like this:

To make this adjustment, open up Hue and Saturation again, but this time reduce the saturation of Yellows to 0, and increase the brightness slider to make the leaves white rather than gray.

Manipulating the 590nm

Starting with a 590nm filter it is possible to do the same thing. Let’s start with this basic 590nm image:

Running a normal channel swap looks like this:

We can now mimic both the 665nm and 720nm effect. Both actions are available in our Action Suite, or it can be done manually.

Decreasing the saturation of the yellow and blue a little bit will mimic the 665nm effect and looks like this:

Reducing the yellow hue completely, and increasing its brightness under Hue and Saturation, and then decreasing the blue saturation a little further mimics the 720nm filter.

Another method to process this is to reduce the yellow hue and saturation and not touch the blues, resulting in a more saturated 720nm effect.