Why, hello there. I am so happy to meet you!

If you are like me, then you will agree that there is just something about infrared photography that makes ones jaw drop. Unfortunately for most of us, it is an awfully expensive hobby…a hobby that I for one, simply cannot afford.

With photoshop and some time, you can recreate this effect with any exposure. In fact, CS3 even has an infrared filter…so those of you who have CS3 have a jump start! However, this tutorial is for the likes of us that are not lucky enough to have CS3.

There are plenty of tutorials out there for creating infrared fakes in photoshop and most of them involve the same process: convert to black and white, boosting the greens, while dropping the reds and blues. Whilst this is true for most images, it is always best to play around with the settings til you get a result that you like. Bear in mind it is not possible to create true in infrared in photoshop but we can get pretty close and create some stunning effects in the process.

Before you start, it’s a good idea to have a look at some infrared photography and make a note of how objects and stuff look, ie, sky becomes dark and dramatic; foliage and grass look as thought they are covered in snow; paths/roads tend to be darker as does water.

This is my source image:

Now convert it to greyscale using the channel mixer. There is no exact setting to use, as it will greatly depend on what is in your image, but generally, you’ll want greens to be boosted as much as possible. Each photograph will use different settings based on exposure, composition, etc, but these are the settings I used for this picture:

You’ll notice that most infrared photography has a glow to it and I like to use what’s famously known as the Orton Effect. Duplicate your background layer twice and turn off the very top one. Set the blend mode of the first duplicated layer to screen and then sharpen to suit your taste. Don’t worry too much as the opacity of this layer will be lowered. These are my settings:

Now turn on the top layer, set the blend mode to multiply and blur it. These are my settings for this layer:

Now adjust the opacity of your sharpened and blurred layers to suit. I adjusted mine to 80% and 50% respectively.

[Edited by Moderator on 3/3/2009 2:25:58 PM]

As it stands now, it’s looking quite good, but I want to add more drama. So I’ve added a curves adjustment layer at the top of the stack with these settings:

Then I set this layer blend to overlay and lowered the opacity to 50%. This step is optional: I personally like the photo as it is but I know already that my path should really be a tad darker and this will give added drama, so I’ve added another curves adjustment layer to the top of the pile with these settings:

Now as I want this layer to only affect my path, so I’ve flood filled it with black. Then I used soft edged paintbrush and painted over my path with white at 100% flow. I blurred this layer using a value of 15 to soften the edges, set the blend mode to luminance and lowered the opacity to 60%. I've put the images side by side to show the difference.

[Edited by Moderator on 3/3/2009 2:26:35 PM]

For even more added drama you can add a new layer to the top of the stack and fill it with a gradient as I did here:

I changed the blend mode to overlay and adjusted the opacity to 38%. If you want to give it an edge, add yet another layer, fill it with colour, set the blend mode to overlay and lower the opacity to suit. Tip: play with different blend modes.

If you’re really feeling adventurous, you could try painting it different colours!

[Edited by Moderator on 3/3/2009 2:26:49 PM]

Wow, that's stunning stuff! Very pretty effect from a very simple scene! But the great clouds and lots of foliage you had to start with work very well!

Thanks for sharing!

K.

Very cool! Thanks Z!

I guess if i start practicing now, i might be prepared in time for the contest that is probably coming up?

;-)

Thanks

You're just too smart! ;)

This is fantastic Z! It's really interesting to see you thinking through the composition of this photo. I learned a lot just from that. Looking forward to giving it a test run. :)

Oh, Cool, Z. I've tried some on-line tuts to do this before with less than spectacular results, so I'm anxious to try this one as your result is wonderful. Yay! thanks so much for this! :-)

Great tut. Thanks!! :)

[Edited by User on 8/5/2008 2:44:21 PM]

Oh nice tut, great effect. I must try this tonight!

WOOT! That was fun!!!

Great tutorial Z :-) - I'm gonna have to have a play with that....

Awesome!