Create a blue sky with your infrared image…
Shooting in infrared can transform a scene into something magical and otherworldly! A creative way to alter the look of an infrared image is to create the blue sky effect by “channel swapping” colors. This is very easy to do with the Channel Mixer in Photoshop. Images created with converted cameras using the enhanced (665nm) or super color (590nm) infrared filters work beautifully for this technique. Certain standard R72 type infrared images such as the one above work too. Here’s how you do it..
Step 1: Choose the Channel Mixer from the Adjustment Panel.
Step 2: Adjust the source channels, moving the red channel slider from 100% to 0, and increase the blue channel slider from 0 to 100%. (You can type in the values).
Step 3: Change the output channel to blue, and increase the red source channel to 100%.
Step 4: Change the blue source channel to from 100% to 0% to exchange the blue channel for the red.
Save this as a preset so you never have to go through these steps again! Click on the small preset options box next to the preset drop down menu “Save Channel Mixer Preset” (at the top of the channel mixer). I saved my settings as “Blue Sky” for easy reference and a one click adjustment.
You can use a Hue Saturation adjustment layer to enhance the color of your blue sky. Choose the Blue or Cyan Channel and adjust the Hue slider to the desired shade of blue. Make great pictures! ~ Deb
This looks like a tree in the fair tales… beautiful!
Hi Gwen! Thank you very much for your comments!
I just watched your excellent HDR NIK presentation. I tried to use the Channel Mixer settings but they are very confusing. i would appreciate if you could check to see if they make sense. thanks
David Arkin
darkin@san.rr.com
Hi David, thank you very much for taking time to listen in. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
The Channel Mixer can be a little tricky. The key is to look at the Output channel and the Source channels which are a little different. Thank you for including your email. Let me shoot you a note with a screenshot and perhaps that will help.
Best,
Deb
Thanks for responding. I would appreciate the information you will send. I just realized that I also may have misunderstood, is the need to shoot an “original infrared” image before I go into Photoshop. Is that correct?
David
Hi David, yes, you’ll need an infrared image to start with, although certain infrared filters may not work for this effect. This was taken with a converted camera (modified with the R72 type infrared filter).