Photoshop Recipe for Infrared with Color

Posted in: On: Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011

This is my recipe for using Photoshop to make colorized infrared photos. This process gives a hand color look to your images.

The first and most important place to start is with image selection.
Thinking about how you shoot the image in the field can make a big difference. Nice clear days with interesting cloud formations can really help a landscape image. I use heavy polarization with a polarizing filter to bring out that blue sky and snap out the clouds. Look for lots of greenery with some splashes of bright color. This works well in the colorizing process I’ll describe later.

I am using a CS2 on a Mac so the commands may be different on a PC.

The first thing you need to do once you’ve opened your image in Photoshop is make a copy of the image in the layer panel: Command>J. Click on the copy and rename it infrared.

Next click on the channel tab and click on green.

This will change the image to black and white.

With infrared selected click the layers tab. Use the drop down right below the layers tab and select screen.

Next, go to the filters menu at the top of toolbar and pick blur>Gaussian blur.

Depending on the file size of your image use the slider to blur it. I shoot large image files so mine is around 20%.

Now go back to your layers panel and at the bottom on the panel select the layering button and from the menu and choose channel mixer.

Here is where you get to play with the image. In the channel mixer box check monochrome to return to black & white. Leave the red and blue at 0 and move green up. As you do you’ll notice the infrared effect increase in intensity. It’s up to you how intense you want the effect to be. I leave green at around 130%.

With channel mixer selected in the layer panel, press shift>command>N to bring up the new layer box. Type grain in the name column and click ok.

You’ll notice a new layer called grain. With grain selected, press command>delete. This will change the image to all white.

Go the to filters at the top of the menu bar and select add noise.

In the box type 20% as your amount, check uniform under distribution and make sure monochrome is selected.

In the layers panel drop down select multiply.

This will add grain to your image. If you want more grain increase the % in the add noise box.

Now go back to your layer panel and select the background image. Make a copy command>J. Rename the copy colorize.

Click on the colorize version and drag it between grain and channel mixer. You will see the bars between the layers darken when you have colorize in the right place. Drop it in place.