Infra Red - Magenta Overload

Dreadhead

Dreadhead

Dreadhead

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Joined
1 Apr 2009
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429
Hello Folks,

I have been having a bash at taking shots with an R72 filter and my Canon 600D with 15-85mm.

One consistent problem I am having is that there is always way too much magenta in my images.

I have played around with the white balance, setting it to various shades of local foliage or grass if available, but I am having real problems getting that classic look.

An example of my work is as follows:

Arambol-Coastline-IR.jpg

I suppose I am looking for more white foliage in the images.
Does anyone have any advice for the next steps in photoshop or lightroom?

Another issue which you can see to the left of the panorama is the hotspot appearing in frame.
I have found I can mitigate this by using smaller apertures and not shooting into direct sunlight, but are there any tips for removing these in post?

Thanks
 
This is a classic problem. Just mis understood what you need to be doing. You need to create a custom white balance to shoot IR with.

You can do this one of two ways.

Firstly you need to take a photo (much like the exposure you have in the example) but compose this so you are shooting a mostly grassy scene. You can just close zoom into a patch of grass for best effects. Now once you have that magenta image of the grass jump into your camera settings and select that last image as your custom white balance preset. Now set your white balance to the custom mode and it'll pull white balance data from that reference. Shoot the scene again under that newly created white balance and you'll have a more natural IR scene captured.

Also if you shot RAW you can use the WB dropper tool to select an area for reference.

Johnny
 
You might not have enough adjustment in the camera colour balance alone. You may need to use both techniques together. I can't get neutral colour balance using the camera custom WB alone. I find I still need to shoot raw and use the dropper tool to pick a suitable area of foliage as well.

Once you got the colour balance the way you want for foliage, then you may wish to explore swapping the red and blue colour channels. Some, not all published IR images are processed this way. It's a pretty standard trick in PS but you will need a third party add in for elements if you wish to avoid really long winded work arounds.
 
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