Topic awaiting preservation: Infrared Film effect

How do I achieve an infrared film effect like below:


I've tried using the channel mixer with diffuse glow but it doesn't seem to reach the desired effect as above. Any help or advise would be greatly appreciated.

Copy the photo
Some Gaussian Blur
Try different blending modes

For starters, I can't seem to see how that image resembles infrared at all.

Secondly, the photo used in that example had very dramatic lighting to start with, which seems to be a large portion of what the effect is. Increased contrast on an already dramatically lit scene, possibly an extra 'light only' layer, blurred, or as WJ said - blurred layer set to color dodge, a slight bit of noise, etc...

0.Higher the contrast.
1.Duplicate the original layer.
2.Gaussian blur the new layer.
3.Set the new layer to soft light.
4.Do steps 1-3 as many times as needed varying the amount of blur and opacity.

Not very precise but it should leave you with something similar to the above. You could also play with curves I guess.
Another way would be to select color range, pick white and then duplicate your selection and blur it above, should work okay with a black and white.

I agree w/DL.. that doesn't look IR to me. I'm thinking if you want to imitate IR you need to think about what happens in an IR pic. Greens become very light, blues become dark.. the reds might be the key to luminosity. I'll bet it can be done w/channel mixer or maybe using a desaturation adjustment layer and tweaking the curves on the individual channels underneath it. Something new I'll have to fiddle with.

Infra Red basically reveal the heat at the surface of the objects. Add to that I've never heard of IR cameras sensing the IR radiance in several wavelength. IR images are usually taken as a single channel.
The colors shown in IR cameras are faked to extract some interresting informations like the temperatures in the range of a human body or of an engine.

As others already said, the image shown by irishblue is simply the result of a great lighting and background including some interresting materials plus certainly some Photoshop processing in the vain of those expressed above.

I think what you are refering to is called Thermography. Very similar but slightly diffrent. Photographic Infra Red Films are sensitive to the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with a little over lap into other wavelenghts. Thermography while also sensitive to infrared is more sensitive, and specfic to higher wavelenghts of infrared. Typically have artifical colors to represent diffrent heat ranges. If standard infrared films were as sesitive you could not effectivly use them.

Using standard infrared films an object would need to be very hot or one would need to shoot in a tempeture control enviroment with lenghtly exposers to produce a useful image.

In addition there there are other variable to consider, the chemical and material make-up of the subject, reflective and refractive properties, and even the time of day or lighting type.

I would suggest, searching the internet for infrared gallerys, to get a better feel on how infrared films work.

Here is an intresting paper on the subject.
http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/text-infrared-basics.html

J. Stuart J.




[This message has been edited by jstuartj (edited 01-29-2004).]

Thanks for all the replies! I tried what Hugh and DL-44 suggested and managed to get something similar but not quite as dramatic. Sorry guys, my mistake to describe it as infrared. I just need my picture to get the effect like the attached pic. I'll just try around more with what the rest have suggested too.


[This message has been edited by irishblue (edited 01-29-2004).]

Well, that image just looks like Gaussian Blur and Dodge Tool... Nothing Special

Well uberelite, I'm certainly glad you poped in with that advice. I don't know what I would have done without it!

Here's a pdf from PEI Magizine by Martin Evening. I read it some time ago and just remembered it.

Deals with a landscape image, but might be something you can pick up. Martin is great.