Infrared Photography
IR photos have dark skies and white foliage and look amazing in Black and White. There are a few different ways to get these effects, you can shoot with IR film and a red Filter, convert a digital camera, OR get the same type of look in post. Today’s episode will show you how you can experiment with this Style with your own images.
Editing in the IR Style
First thing I’ll do is use a Black and White Adjustment Layer to choose what the Light Levels will look like. Try going through the Presets to see what effects they can give. Going through each color and setting each, such as making the greens bright and the blues very dark, will give you a great base to start with.
Using Select-Color Range to make selections is a great technique to try for this. Bringing up the fuzziness allows me to select out the blues in the image, and once that’s done I’ll make a New Layer with a Linear gradient from the top down.
I’ll use Color Range to select out our green and brighten them by filling that selection with white on a New Layer.
Taking the time to mask out each area in the way you want it to look will make your image much better.
This image had a slight Color shift on the edges, and to fix it we’ll go to Select-Color Range for the Background. Next fill that selection with a Lighter Color and go to Select-Modify. Contract by about 2 pixels and hit Ok. This will help everything look much more natural.
Curves Adjustment Layers are great for separating out the Background once you’re finished.
Before and After
