help with IR

chrismoore

Help!
went out to try out R72 filter. I read several tutorials on processing these images. All said the image would be red out of the camera. Fine, it is. Then most suggest starting the workflow with auto levels, or red/blue swap. The problem is nothing I do to this image changes it for the better. I was hoping someone could take a look, and tell me what I'm doing wrong. You can download a full res file here.

aktse

chrismoore wrote:

The problem is nothing I do to this image changes it for the better. I was hoping someone could take a look, and tell me what I'm doing wrong. You can download a full res file here.

Nothing you can do to make the photo better? The question is -- what are you trying to achieve? What type of problems are you facing?

In general, I find that I need to exposure compensate e bout one to two stops in camera.

I took a 20 second stab at at the photo and worked on an uncalibrated latop monitor. It's not a full processing effort, but it should give you an idea of what you can do. I bumped up the exposure in ACR, changed the WB, adjusted the levels a bit, and used the channel mixer to make it B&W. done.

When I see the photo, I think B&W, but I find that i like B&W for IR photos rather than false color.

chrismoore wrote:

chrismoore

Thanks for doing that. Really it was an attempt to put into practice what I had been reading in the posts. I guess I was hoping to achieve some false color results, but I see what you mean with BW, and I really didn't try that route. Without converting to BW, I tried changing the levels and channel mixer and all that did was blow out the highlights and turn the whole image blue with the red/blue swap. I didn't really have a goal other than to try some suggestions in the threads, and I posted because I was curious if others who have a lot of experience processing IR images could do anything with it. The reason I chose this shot is because with the filter I had to do a 30 sec exposure and it was a windy day so about the only thing I could think of to work in my favor was the water movement.
Thanks again
Chris

aktse

chrismoore wrote:

I guess I was hoping to achieve some false color results, but I see what you mean with BW, and I really didn't try that route.

I personally believe that not all images look good in false color, but I think that's just me. Depending on the IR mod (and maybe filter?), you will not be able to do false color.

You might want to pick the brains of fredmeyers, skippy, panther, etc since they have more experience in it. In some ways, it's all trial and error and stop when you develop the photo to your liking. I usually start with a quick WB adjustment, levels/curves, and then a color swap. If I like what I'm seeing and can see some separation in color, I continue this false color path; otherwise, I start with the B&W.

For false color, the goal is to separate the color as much as possible.
1) start with WB/expsoure
2) adjust curves & levels for high contrast
3) swap red/blue channels; adjust to your liking
4) play with Hue/Saturation
5) desaturate
6) I might adjust the curves again
7) add luminosity toning
8) sharpen

Good luck! And post more examples!