How To Do INFRARED
I posted this a while ago but had to put it away until it was published in a magazine…well that magazine (Australian Digital Photography & Design) comes out next week (I think) so here you go…this is what I do…..
HOW TO Shoot INFRARED IMAGES
Characteristics of infrared photographs are deep black skies, bright white foliage and sometimes bright blue skies. Often quite mundane scenes can be transformed into extraordinary images when captured with infrared.
To achieve the effect, you need to use a lens filter that can block visible wavelengths of light, while allowing infrared (IR) light to pass through. The most readily available filter that can do this is an R72 screw-type filter. HOYA is the most popular but you can also purchase Lee and Cokin filters which act in the same manner.
All DSLR cameras are capable of detecting varying degrees of infrared light but manufacturers put permanent infrared blocking filters over the sensor to stop the infrared light penetrating. However, they still let some light through, so by placing an IR filter over your lens you will be able to capture these escaping wavelengths and thus a surreal image.
The downside to these IR filters is that they actually let in very little light of any kind so long exposures are necessary. Some cameras are more sensitive to IR than others but because you will have an exposure that it several seconds long a tripod is a necessity and a shutter release is optional.
Your IR filter will cut all visible light so the viewfinder will be rendered useless when it comes time to compose a shot. All images will need to be composed before the filter is attached. Point and shoot Digital Cameras are usually capable of seeing through the filter as the filters used to block the IR wavelengths are not as strong as those of the DSLR. So in many cases the filter can be attached when composing the image. As you will have a long exposure (of up to 20secs perhaps) still subjects are the easiest thing to shoot. Most successful IR shots are of landscapes.
An unedited IR imaged will take on a red hue and look un-useable, but this is just because you have not set a Custom White Balance (CWB). By attaching the filter and taking a shot of green grass and setting this as the CWB you will vastly improve your image. In doing this you will allow for mid-tones and whites to appear. Of course you can always adjust the white balance in Photoshop later.
All infrared images will need some post processing in Photoshop to get the best out of them. The simplest technique is to convert the image to Black and White and increase the contrast a little. This will achieve the classic infrared look achieved by infrared film. However, digital cameras can create false colours and can produce a surreal effect. Trees can be blue, the sky can be yellow and the ground red.
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HOW TO PROCESS AN INFRARED IMAGE TO GET A SURREAL WINTERY FEEL.
Step 0 — Bringing your file into Photoshop
Download your images – if RAW, convert (to tiff or jpeg) and bring into Photoshop. Note: Exposure and White Balance will make a difference on your final result, so there might be some trial and error – in general I set a Custom White Balance by attaching the R72 filter to the camera and shooting green grass.
Step 1 — Auto Levels
I always adjust the levels before progressing further. This will swing the colours significantly. SHIFT+CTRL+L is the shortcut for this process. If you have a good shot, tree leaves and clouds will appear close to White in colour and the sky will take on a yellow tinge.
Step 2 — Channel Mixer (Swap Red & Blue Channels)
From here on it is about shifting colours. If you want Blue sky you will need to swap the Red and Blue colors in your image. It is easiest to do this with the Channel Mixer. Image>Adjustment>Channel Mixer.
Set Red to 100% Blue 
and set Blue to 100% Red. Leave Green 100% Green. 
You could probably get a similar effect using Hue/Sat function to shift Hues, but Channel Mixer is MUCH easier.
Step 3 — Levels (Clip Back and White Points)
Select IMAGE>ADJUSTMENTS>LEVELS and adjust the White and Black points. It seems beneficial to clip the Black point a bit and perhaps even the White point a little depending on the image exposure. Boosting midpoint may help as well (or may not). Input might be something like: 15, 1.10, 250 (for Black, Mid, and White) but this will be image dependent and you will have to tweak the settings. Experiment! 
Step 4 — Hue/Sat (Adjust Sky & Cloud Color)
At this point your image should be pretty close, but you will probably want to further adjust Hue and Saturation. IMAGE>ADJUSTMENS> HUE & SATURATION. You can change individual colours by using the drop down menu in the EDIT box. To make the trees look whiter I reduced the saturation of all REDS in the image.
Step 5 — Brightness/Contrast
Now adjust the brightness/contrast of the image to bring out the colours just a bit more. IMAGE>ADJUSTMENT>BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST. In this image I increased the contrast by 5.
Step 6 – Noise Reduction
A feature of classic infrared film images is the film grain. If you are not a fan of the noise produced by your long exposure then use a NOISE REDUCTION FILTER to remove any excess noise.
Step 7 – Burning
If some parts of your image are not as dark as you would like use the BURN TOOL to bring them out a bit. In this image some of the tree trunks are a bit pale for my liking so I am going to burn them slightly, especially the ones reflected in the water. Make sure that you set the Range to SHADOWS and the Exposure should be set very low. I have set it to 5. 
And there you have it – a fully processed Infrared image.
Basia McAuley
Thanks Naomi! I keep meaning to explore IR so I’ll fave this and hopefully find some time to play!! :o)
Explosive
Oh, thanks for sharing it!!!! Lovely. Also hoping to explore IR one day….
anwarsalim
Thank you Naomi..
Matt Penfold
Thank you so much for sharing this Naomi :-)
Chris Clark
absolutely brilliant tutorial Naomi and I must rush out now and buy an IR filter…....well not now because it’s the middle of the night here in Scotland…..lol
Diane Schuster
Wow! Wonderful tutorial! Thanks for the info, I really appreciate your work! Dee
Patricia Montg...
I have just started shooting in infrared so I really do appreciate you sharing this information!
Kylie Reid
Thanks Naomi, much appreciated. Looking forward to giving it a go.
John Robb
Thank you Naomi – wonderfully written – I look forward to giving it a little try one day.
Nerida13
Awesome, thanks so much for sharing this!
woof
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
Chris Summerville
Very very helpful…thanks a lot!
Bruce Watson
A well explained little tutorial Naomi.
Miriam Shilling
thank you this is such a help.
Richard VanWart
Thanks for the well-presented, thorough tutorial! Your generous effort is much appreciated. Cheers!
Simon Gladwin
Ahhh so thats how its done :-P
gypsygirl
Thanks Naomi for this, I must save up my pennies a get a filter!
Great tut, thanks for sharing!!
Cheers Tina :-))
Lenka
Thanks for sharing :) I’m afraid my Canon is not suitable for IR but I’m keeping my eyes on the subject and hope there will come a moment I’ll start with it too :) The IR pictures are simply so lovely surreal and otherwordly!
BYRON
There are companies now that will modify your DSLR [or pocket dinky digital] by removing the IR filters. It costs around $400AUS, and effectively resolves all issues with taking digital IR photography. You will still need to use a lens filter [I prefer a Wratten 25A Red filter, personally]. This way the images need little or no post production, and they look properly Infra red.
Natalia Tjandra
wow..thank you so much for the tutorial!
gwensgems668
This is a great help BUT…do you know how to convert a digital camera to take IR? I’d like to know so I can try it on one of mine. Any info would help!! thanks! Congrats on the publication too! Have you had many articles published? – Jennifer
Naomi Frost replied
Hi Jennifer,
Check out lifepixels.com – they show you how to convert a camera for IR – very tricky stuff. And I’ve had about 5 articles published in that particular magazine.
chijude
Will try to keep this info for later use, Thanks for your time and energy and your willingness to share.
Paul Tupman
I’ve just stumbeled across this… I dont have an IR filter now, but when the time comes, I’ll be sure to refer to this! Thanks for sharing some of your wealth of knowledge and congrats on getting the tutorial published in the magazine.
Hans Kawitzki
Thanks Naomi for posting this article but I do have a question in regards to Custom White Balance.
In every article I have read they mention the use of CWB but I have not found an explanation in how to set the CWB correctly,here is my question:
With the 72R filter attached to the lens take a photo of green grass/grey/white card,fine but what now ?
Set the camera on auto exposure ? set it to manual mode ? set it to f5.6,f8.0,f11?
2 sec/4sec/8sec ? what is the correct way ?
I have no problem in loading the CWB into my camera and using it my problem is the above questions…......oh yeah and there is no green grass to be found in Victoria at present :)
Naomi Frost replied
Hi Hans,
Well here is what I did…Attached the filter and put the cameras settings on what I intended to use when taking the pictures. So it is usually ISO200, f5.6, 10secs. Point the camera at green grass (if available) and then use that as my white balance. I have only ever taken one CWB and I use the same one all the time. This is probably not ideal as the lighting conditions would be different everytime I get out my camera, but I just adjust the exposure to compensate. I’ve read lots of things that suggest that grey/white card doesn’t set a correct white balance – I haven’t tried this. I have just always used grass. I also always use manual mode – camera seems to cope better. I suppose if there is no green grass there might be some other type of greenery around – a plant with really big leaves perhaps.
Of course you can always adjust the CWB in Photoshop. I have found that if I shoot in RAW and adjust in Lightroom it cannot cope as the temperature does not go low enough and therefore the original image won’t take on yellow hues and channel swap nicely into blues but if I shoot in JPG, Lightroom is fine. Photoshop seems to cope well, depends on the version you have I think – the latest ones cope better.
Hope this has been helpful.
Naomi
Hans Kawitzki
Thanks Naomi for clearing this up for me I will give it go,these settings are about the same what I normaly use when taking IR…......now waiting for some grass to grow :)
Thanks again – Cheers.
Hans.
Ren Atkins
Thanks for sharing this Naomi, this clears up a couple of little points that were preventing me from getting the results I was after.
Rebecca Bryson
This was great..some day I will have Photoshop but way to expensive for me. ;)
Tom Vaughan
Thanks, Naomi…this gives me inspiration to try it!
martinpulido36
Naomi i followed your instructions down to the lat dot yet i can not seem to produce a successful false color infrared image. i shoot with a canon 450D (xsi) and an R72 opteka infrared filter. i take a picture of green grass with the filter on and i comes out red. i set it as the CWB and whenever i take a picture it comes out monochrome for some reason. any advice or help you could offer would be greatly apreciated.
Naomi Frost replied
I have heard of someone else having this problem too – he shoots with a Canon 450D and an Opteka filter… Have you tried another brand of ir filter? If you are following the instructions and it still turns out red, I would have to think that it has something to do with the brand of filter you are using. I have never used an opteka – only a KOOD and a HOYA. It would be interesting to see if a change in filter makes a difference. Can you borrow one from someone?
btw – so sorry it took me so long to get back to you – I must have missed your original posting.
Sarah-fiona Helme
Yes, I have the same problem. The original shot comes out red and black. I would appreciate some help.
Naomi Frost replied
By any chance are you using an Opteka ir filter?
Sarah-fiona Helme
Thanks for replying, Naomi. No, it’s an R72 like yours (using Canon 40D). I am just learning how to do a custom white balance and hadn’t taken one for the shots I took. Could that be the reason? Need to wait for sunshine before I can try again (the joys of living in Scotland, lol!) I’ll let you know how I get on. I’m so excited about this and I’d so love to be able to achieve the kind of IR effects that you’re getting. Also, I only have PSE 6 and there’s no channel mixer. Would you have to know of a good plugin that gives a result as good as photoshops channel mixer?
Sarah-fiona Helme
Have tried once again after taking a proper white balance from the grass, but my images straight from the camera are red. What aren’t I doing right?
Naomi Frost replied
Hi Sarah,
Sorry I have taken so long to get back to you…but..
I have been following some forums on another site and lots of people are having trouble like you with their filters – turns out there could be a dodgy batch going around on ebay. Your filter may not be infrared but a very dark red filter..but people are finding that it will give them a really good B&W IR conversion shot. It also depends on the program you process the image in too. Most will only give a minimum white balance temperature of 2000k. You need to go much lower than this for IR (so that your images will look yellow) and this could account for why your shots look red when you put them on the computer. Apparently you can go lower than 2000K in Lightroom 2. If you used Adobe Camera RAW to process (the software that came with your camera) you can download a DNG camera profile and a profile editor to reduce the temp of the white balances. Here’s a link
and another and one more
I hope this helps a little.
Lois Bryan
this is sooooooooooooooooooo interesting!!!! One of these days I’m going to take the plunge and try this … thanks so much for this informative tutorial!!! It’s very, very much appreciated!!! I LOVE these kinds of images!!!!!
LisaR
Thanks heaps for the advice!
Lurchello
naomi very helpful, thanks, i had always believed before that you had to set the cwb with a white piece of paper but alas i will try green grass (leanne!!)
Diane Schuster
Wow! astounding images and info, thanks so much for sharing! Dee
Spookee
Thanks for sharing, Naomi! I’ve always been looking for something like this- not only the ‘How’ but the ‘Why’ as well.
David Burren
Thanks for putting this up Naomi.
Lurchello, for visible-light work we set the WB on something that’s supposed to be neutral (grey, white, etc). For IR work we set the WB on something that we WANT to appear neutral (often grass).
I wrote an article on processing Infrared RAW files (using DNG profiles) that you may find useful. If you get your RAW processing right you can minimise the amount of “twiddling” that’s needed in Photoshop.
Janek Krause
Just ordered my first Infrared filter, I’m so excited to try this out.
Thanks for the tutorial.
TheWanderer
Thank you SO MUCH for writing this… greatly appreciated!
TW
brian hopper
thank you so much for this.
i’ve looked at all sorts of tutorials on IR and have found them all confusing. this one is brilliant.
Rene Hales 2 days ago
Thanks so much for sharing you tutorial.—Rene
Jonathan L Green 2 days ago
Interesting,
Hope To Try Sometime,
Thanks