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Digital Infrared Photography

How to use software to creatively enhance

By Rick Sammon, Photography By Rick Sammon

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This Article Features Photo Zoom

digital infrared

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Digital infrared photography opens up a whole new world of creativity, even for photographers who already have a creative bent. If you have an older digital camera that you’re not using, two companies, Life Pixel (www.lifepixel.com) and IRDigital (www.irdigital.net), convert many Canon and Nikon cameras—both SLRs and compact models—to infrared-only cameras. The image for this article, taken in Mongolia, was taken with a converted Canon SD-800 compact camera.

If you don’t have an extra camera that can be converted, but have a film camera around, you can shoot infrared film, scan it and still take advantage of these ideas for the digital darkroom. Infrared images look creative and artistic because some of the reality is erased from the scene. Removing the color is the first step in removing the reality. Then comes the real fun: Green foliage turns white, making it look as though it’s covered with a thin coat of snow or ice.

Play around with filters in Photoshop or Elements (www.adobe.com), or with plug-ins, Blending Modes, Adjustment Layers and Actions, to get even more creative options. Add a digital frame, as I did here using a Brush frame from onOne Software’s PhotoFrame Pro 3 (www.ononesoftware.com), and your pictures look even more artistic.

The creative possibilities available using the digital darkroom are endless. Let’s take a quick look at how you can enhance and take control of your IR images. The opening picture for this column illustrates the result of the following five steps.

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