Post by jeffreyklassen on Aug 25, 2006 11:34:00 GMT -5
Hello,
I don't pretend to know everything about Infrared Photography but I have had 100's of requests for my Infrared Process, so I thought it might be nice to share it here as well.
My infrared gallery is located here: www.pbase.com/jeffreyk/infrared
What you need.
1. An IR filter - I have both the Tiffen 87 and Hoya R72, The tiffen is a much darker filter and doesn't allow as much colour. I recommend the HoyaR72.
2. Camera - The Nikon D70 works great with both filters. Aperently the newer cameras. (D200, D80) are not as good for IR photography. I have yet to actually test my D200 with IR.
3. A tripod - Because the Nikon cameras have IR filters to block IR you will have some long exposures so a good sturdy tripod is a must.
My IR process.
1. Set camera to manual mode, and raw data.
2. Find a nice bright patch of grass, and custom white balance on it with filter. Custom White balance is important here is what you get with and without a manual white balance. If you shoot raw which you should this is less important because you can change it later.
Straight from the camera without white balance. Very Red and hard to work with.
Straight from the camera with a custom white balance. As you can see a much better image from the get go.
3. Set the camera up and compose, and focus with the filter off.
4. Turn focus to manual, (To stop it from hunting around with the filter)
5. Put the filter on and check exposure, adjust the shutter speed until you are over exposing the image by quite a bit. Take a few practice shots to get it so that it is nice and bright but not overexposed.
6. Take the photo, and repeat steps 3-5 till you have lots of pictures.
7. Transfer your images to your photo-manager (i use picasa 2)
8. Pick an image that looks good, and open with Nikon capture or Adobe Raw
9. Tweak White Balance or fix it if you forgot to set a custom one.
10. Adjust lighting and exposure
11. Import to PS
12. From here I have a PS script that does the following. Download it here: jeffreyklassen.com/actions/JK_IR_Processing.zip
1.Creates a Channel Mixer layer with the following settings
Red Output: Red = 0%, Green = 0%, Blue = 100%
Green Output: Red = 0%, Green = 100%, Blue = 0%
Blue Output: Red = 100%, Green = 0%, Blue = 0%
2.Creates a Curves later above that, with Auto (I tweak it later)
3.Creates a Saturation layer above that with the following settings
Reds: -40 saturation (Always have to tweak this)
Cyans: +30 saturation
Blues: +50 saturation
13. From here you should have a image that is usable as B&W and almost there for colour. But from here on every image is very different. Here are somethings that I usually do:
1.Create a new layer and run Noise Ninja on it. Use a layer mask to apply it only to the sky and water areas.
2. Soft light layer (create a new layer and apply soft light blend-mode)I use it to enhance tones a bit.
3. I usually end up with a couple levels layers with masks to add contrast to specific areas, so I will adjust levels till the high and low lights clip, then mask those areas to bring the detail back.
4. Sharpen
This process should get you decent results if you follow it, but you have to remember that every photo is different and you will need to tweak lots of little things to get it just right.
Eventually you will end up with somthing like this. All I tweaked with this image was levels, and saturation.
PS. Well I hope someone find this useful, I may try adding some photos for the process one day.
Here are some low rez examples, visit my gallery above for better quality images.
I don't pretend to know everything about Infrared Photography but I have had 100's of requests for my Infrared Process, so I thought it might be nice to share it here as well.
My infrared gallery is located here: www.pbase.com/jeffreyk/infrared
What you need.
1. An IR filter - I have both the Tiffen 87 and Hoya R72, The tiffen is a much darker filter and doesn't allow as much colour. I recommend the HoyaR72.
2. Camera - The Nikon D70 works great with both filters. Aperently the newer cameras. (D200, D80) are not as good for IR photography. I have yet to actually test my D200 with IR.
3. A tripod - Because the Nikon cameras have IR filters to block IR you will have some long exposures so a good sturdy tripod is a must.
My IR process.
1. Set camera to manual mode, and raw data.
2. Find a nice bright patch of grass, and custom white balance on it with filter. Custom White balance is important here is what you get with and without a manual white balance. If you shoot raw which you should this is less important because you can change it later.
Straight from the camera without white balance. Very Red and hard to work with.
Straight from the camera with a custom white balance. As you can see a much better image from the get go.
3. Set the camera up and compose, and focus with the filter off.
4. Turn focus to manual, (To stop it from hunting around with the filter)
5. Put the filter on and check exposure, adjust the shutter speed until you are over exposing the image by quite a bit. Take a few practice shots to get it so that it is nice and bright but not overexposed.
6. Take the photo, and repeat steps 3-5 till you have lots of pictures.
7. Transfer your images to your photo-manager (i use picasa 2)
8. Pick an image that looks good, and open with Nikon capture or Adobe Raw
9. Tweak White Balance or fix it if you forgot to set a custom one.
10. Adjust lighting and exposure
11. Import to PS
12. From here I have a PS script that does the following. Download it here: jeffreyklassen.com/actions/JK_IR_Processing.zip
1.Creates a Channel Mixer layer with the following settings
Red Output: Red = 0%, Green = 0%, Blue = 100%
Green Output: Red = 0%, Green = 100%, Blue = 0%
Blue Output: Red = 100%, Green = 0%, Blue = 0%
2.Creates a Curves later above that, with Auto (I tweak it later)
3.Creates a Saturation layer above that with the following settings
Reds: -40 saturation (Always have to tweak this)
Cyans: +30 saturation
Blues: +50 saturation
13. From here you should have a image that is usable as B&W and almost there for colour. But from here on every image is very different. Here are somethings that I usually do:
1.Create a new layer and run Noise Ninja on it. Use a layer mask to apply it only to the sky and water areas.
2. Soft light layer (create a new layer and apply soft light blend-mode)I use it to enhance tones a bit.
3. I usually end up with a couple levels layers with masks to add contrast to specific areas, so I will adjust levels till the high and low lights clip, then mask those areas to bring the detail back.
4. Sharpen
This process should get you decent results if you follow it, but you have to remember that every photo is different and you will need to tweak lots of little things to get it just right.
Eventually you will end up with somthing like this. All I tweaked with this image was levels, and saturation.
PS. Well I hope someone find this useful, I may try adding some photos for the process one day.
Here are some low rez examples, visit my gallery above for better quality images.