Super color Infrared is by far our most popular Infrared conversion because it offers such a wide range of options in post-production. When properly white balanced, you have 4 color tones, Red and Yellow in the sky and Blue and Cyan in the foliage. When channel swapped, it has a great faux color look.
The problem though is this isn’t the way a Super Color often looks. Here’s an example
Here’s our properly White Balanced Super Color image.
Now let’s channel swap it.
Not exactly the same as the others.
The image above has all four color tones, these below do not, they are mostly Blue and Yellow.
To get this look is very simple.
Step 1.
In Photoshop, open Image, Adjustments, Hue/Saturation
Step 2.
In Hue/Saturation change the color from Master to Cyans.
Step 3.
Move the Hue slider on the Cyans to the right, into the blue, effectively changing the Cyan to Blue.
Step 4.
Next, change the color to Red.
Step 5.
Move the Hue Slider on the Reds to the right, effectively changing the Reds to Yellow.
Step 6.
See how your new image looks now.
Now depending on each image, you may need to adjust the sliders differently to get the desired results.
But that’s all there is to it.
Now it’s your turn, give it a try.
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Dan Wampler
Dan Wampler is a digital artist from St Louis, MO. Having been interested in art and photography since childhood, he spent most of adult life working for Kodak and in the portrait photography industry. A student of the works of Ansel Adams, Any Warhol, and David Hamilton, Dan attempted to keep a wide range of artistic style.
As an early adopter of digital imaging, he found it gave him a way to completely incorporate art and photography. Began shooting Digital Infrared in 2004, and had first camera converted in 2006. His work has been seen in numerous gallery shows, is featured in an iTunes app. He produces Infrared and natural color digital art for sale and teaches his post-production techniques online.
Dan is LifePixel's Creative Director, social media manager, lead blog author, main workshops and training sessions instructor. His images appear in this gallery and throughout the website.
If you have a topic suggestion or request feel free to shoot him an email at danwampler@lifepixel.com
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Will NX Studio allow channel swaps? I really don’t want to buy Photoshop. I do have LR 6, but have not installed it yet.
Thanks.
Hi Martin,
Unfortunately, NX Studio doesn’t allow for channel swapping.
Feel free to reach out to our email, service@lifepixel.com, if you have more questions about infrared photography or the editing workflow for files.
I didn’t realize I was going to have to buy this Nikon program, I have always used Bridge. I can’t afford to do that right now, so I guess I’m out of luck. Thanks anyway.
No, not at all Kevan. Nikon’s RAW editor, NX Studio is free software to download. It will allow you to set a proper White Balance and then convert the file to a Jpg or a Tiff.
That should solve all your problems.
The photographs coming right off my camera in raw and in Jpeg the foliage is white and every thing else is orange. There is no blue in the photos other than a tinge of cyan in the shadows. They look nothing like the photos in your tutorials coming off the camera. I set the white balance by pointing it at the grass and that photo I took is white. There is no blue in my photos. Both my husband and I have spent hours now trying to duplicate the “simple” adjustments in your tutorial and it’s just not happening. I am not a stranger to IR photography. I have sold IR photos in the past. I had better results with my little pocket Leica.
Hi Kevan,
Every Nikon dSLR newer than a D200 will usually not allow you to set an in camera preset white balance after being converted to IR, especially with any of the color IR filters. As a result, the images in camera do not usually look correct. Once you bring them into Capture NX-D or NX Studio and correct the white balance, the images start to look as they should. I am curious though as you talk about setting a preset wb with your converted D90 off of green grass but is the camera actually indicating that the wb has been accepted? Usually, the camera will give you a no good message over and over when trying to set a custom wb. If you want to send an unprocessed RAW to service@lifepixel.com, I can tell right away if the white balance is set nicely or not.
It is sort of hard to further help you through this exchange but if you want to talk on the phone, I would be more than happy to go over all of this in more detail!
I got my camera yesterday. I set the wb by taking a pic of green grass. They look nothing like the top picture right off the camera, all the foliage is white or light yellow and everything else is orange. I cried twice.
Hi Kevan, You should have received your invitation for a complimentary 30 minute training session. You will want to sign up for that so you can learn how to process your IR images.