Infrared Photography Post Processing

[jack_ryan]

Hello all,

I bought myself a Hoya R72 filter and have taken plenty of infrared photos with it on. I don't have photoshop, but I use GIMP. Does anyone have experience using either platforms to adjust the photo after it has been taken? I am looking to get the white look, but cannot reduce the red infrared levels without throwing off the color composition of the entire photo!

Painfully frustrated,

Jack

[arlon]

Set custom white balance on something like grass. That will give you a starting point that has a LOT less red in it.

[Ruzarko]

I can honestly share your pain, I've been through the same old process and I'm finally starting to learn how to use infrared through trial and error. At this point Auto works wonderfully but you can honestly set the white balance yourself if you feel the need to. I know how to adjust the photo for Photoshop so unfortunately I can only tell you how to process the photo with Photoshop

-First off set the auto levels so that the pictures adjusts itself to a proper colour.
-After that mix channels by going into channel mixer with changing channels in the Red channel with red to 0% and Blue to 100% and vice versa in Blue channel Red to 100% and blue to 0%
-After that you can play with hue saturation but really after changing channels the result should be immediate.

If not your exposure needs to be much longer. Thats what I've found working with infrared

Good luck

[inkista]

Probably, what you want to do is a custom white balance on something loaded with chlorophyll (grass is always good), and then a red/blue channel swap in post processing.

Remember, that you'll only get "the white look" with vegetation that's green--it's the chlorophyll that's reflecting the infrared light. If you don't have any green green plants in the frame, you're not going to get that.

[Evn1ngStar]

I've not used Gimp in quite a while, but hey I figure if I've got the process down in photoshop, how hard can gimp be to figure it out. So I downloaded it and had a whack at it.

Took me about 15 minutes to figure out what the workflow should be and here it is.

First, open your photo, then on the top taskbar find "colors" and open. In the drop down box find "curves" and open that. Look for your green channel and drag the diagonal bar you see in the pop up box slightly upwards until your green (grass or leaves) turn whitish. Click ok when you are happy with the degree of white.

Second, go back to the top taskbar and click "colors" again, find "components" in the drop down box, click that and look for "channel mixer". You have to swap out your red and blue channels. So on the red channel box, change the number 100 in the red to 0, and the 0 to 100, without closing the window, switch to blue and swap the red and blue numbers as well, the 100 in blue to 0, and the 0 to 100 in red. Then you can hit ok to close out that window.

Third, again find "colors" on the taskbar, click and find "hue/saturation" and fiddle with the sliders until you are happy with your colors.

Fourth, fine tune by going to "colors" and find "levels" in the drop down box, use the slider bar to complete your photo.

I'm including the before and after I just did in Gimp,




and here is a version I had previously done in Photoshop. Gimp came pretty close to what I had done in Photoshop.



Hope this helps.

Yvonne