Create the look of infrared film digitally

Digital Darkroom Questions (DDQ)August 4, 2008

by Tim Grey http://www.timgrey.com/tim@timgrey.com
Books: www.timgrey.com/books/index.htm Blog: www.timgrey.com/blog

I'd like to create the look of infrared film in some of my digital captures. Can you recommend an approach for this?

There are a variety of approaches you could take for creating a simulated infrared look in a digital capture.

Here's the method I use most often:

Start by creating a new Black & White adjustment layer by clicking on the Create New Adjustment Layer (half black/half white circle button at the bottom of the Layers palette) and choosing Black & White. Increase the value for Greens significantly, to somewhere between 200% and 300%. You might also want to increase the value for Yellows, since many green areas in a photographic image contain considerable amounts of yellow. The goal is to brighten all green areas of the image (or at least the greens that are foliage) to nearly white.

If the sky is visible in the image, reduce the value for Blues to darken the sky. Infrared is generally exhibited by a near-black sky, so you’ll want to darken significantly. If reducing the Blues slider doesn’t produce the desired effect, you’ll probably need to make a targeted adjustment to darken the sky separately. Resist the urge to darken the Cyans in order to affect the sky, as that will tend to reduce the brightening you already applied to the Greens.

To create the halo effect commonly found with infrared images, create a duplicate of the Background image layer by dragging it to the Create a New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers palette. Reduce the opacity for this layer to about 50% using the control at the top-right of the Layers palette, and then apply a slight (around 10 pixels) Gaussian Blur by selecting Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

If you want to produce an effect that more closely matches what you would achieve with infrared film, hold the Alt/Option key and click the Create a New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers palette. In the New Layer dialog box, set the Mode to Hard Light and check the box to fill with 50% gray (I also recommend giving this new layer a meaningful name, such as Add Noise). Click OK, and then select Filter > Noise > Add Noise (you could use the Film Grain filter on the Artistic submenu for this as well, but I find I prefer the look I achieve with Add Noise). Set the Distribution to Gaussian and then adjust the Amount setting to apply noise to taste. I find that values of between about 2% and 6% work well for most images. Click OK when you’re satisfied with the result. You can also reduce the opacity of this layer to mitigate the effect if necessary.

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