Further explorations in Infra-Red

As infra red photographers know, post processing takes a little bit of thought.

First, the captures are rather flat and second they will also have a strong colour cast.

In previous posts I have spoken about colour processing of infra-red and the power of using Lab mode. In this short post I’m revisiting some of my IR shots from my recent trip to Canyon de Chelly, which is owned by the Navajo Tribal Trust of the Navajo Nation.

All my IR captures are with a converted 50D and, of course, I use Magic Lantern. This base capture is 12mm, ISO 100, F/8 and 1/80s. ML ensured it was an ETTR capture.

The post processing starts by correcting for the lens in LR and using an IR profile to remove the red cast.

I then used piccure+ to maximise the ‘sharpness’ of the image, ie virtually ‘boosting’ the lens to an L lens. BTW piccure+ works best at the start of post processing, ie before you start to push data around.

I then exported to PS-CC-2015 and used the new dehaze feature, to recover some of the detail. It was then a simple round trip to Silver Efex Pro II, before I enhanced the image with Flaming Pear Flood.

Although it is ‘fun’ to create colour images from IR, the real power of IR photography is as a starting point for B&W processing.