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White Grassland

Posted by Amir (Tehran, Iran) on 13 October 2007 in Plants & Nature and Portfolio.

Fort Worth, TX

This is not my first IR photo here on Animus3. In fact I have posted more than a dozen or so in the past couple of months. But now I want to reveal the secret behind colored IR. I know there are some professionals out there that already know the trick, but this is for the general public with passion for infrared.

Most IR photos are in fact desaturated (B&W) photos, where the sky is grayed out. But in this method you can keep the colors and if you follow all the steps properly, you could come up with fascinating results.

First thing first, you need a good IR photo. As I said before, IR photos have some essential parts. Nice blue sky, some white good fatty clouds and the most important part, green vegetation (Chlorophyll).

Before pressing the shutter, one needs to figure out the ideal white balance. The slightest deviation of WB could render your photo useless for conversion to colored-IR. And remember, IR by nature is noisy, so take your photo at the lowest possible ISO.

Once the photo is taken, you job is done at the field and now you should import your photo to photo editor of your choice. I use Photoshop CS3, but it could be done with many simpler (cheaper) softwares. Now open your Channel Mixer in layer window and do the following:

1. Select Red Output Channel, keep Red and Green at 0%, while Increasing Blue to 100%.
2. Select Blue Output Channel, Keep Green and Blue at 0%, while increasing Red to 100%.
3. Select Green Output Channel, Keep Red and Blue at 0%, while increasing Green to 100%.

This was the major part. Now you can fix the levels, curve and color balance or apply auto functions of each. A little noise reduction in the sky and sharpening of vegetations and structures will help too.

See the original at Flickr

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Canon PowerShot A640
5/1 second
F/5.6
ISO 80
8 mm

canon
ir
a640