Creating surreal infrared style black and white pictures.

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I have always been interested in infrared photography and have always wanted to try it, unfortunately my current camera is not capable of doing it, and the images I tried had a big hot spot in the middle that ruins all the photos.

Luckily for me and others that have the same problem it is possible to create the same sort of effect as using infrared films and filters using computer software like Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop. All of these photos are pictures that I have taken on standard digital cameras, but I have played around with them using Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 using its built in infrared effect in combination with the clarify effect to create surreal infrared style pictures. I am pretty sure that Photoshop has the same sort effect too, if anybody has created any using photoshop, please send me a link so I can see how they turn out?

Here are a few examples of fake infrared pictures I have created using Paint Shop Pro X2:

	This is an infrared view of Hastings Pier taken from the beach when the tide had just gone out.
	This is an infrared style picture of Ashburnham Place, which is near Battle in East Sussex.
	A beautiful Tiger that I managed to photograph at Chessington Zoo. The black and white contrast works well with infrared.
	An infrared style picture of a night time scene on the seafront at Southend in Essex, this is the area I grew up in.
	Bodiam Castle is not far from the Kent / East Sussex border and one of my favourite places to photograph. Infrared seems to suit castles.
	This is an infrared style photo of the cafe at Horam Manor in East Sussex, they do great bacon rolls! They have amazing nature trails that are really beautiful when the Bluebells are out.
	This picture is the inside of Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, the lighting was very atmospheric and converted to infrared very nicely.
	Battle Abbey in East Sussex is not far from me, so I go quite often to take photos. I will convert more to infrared soon.
	This infrared picture is part of the De La Warr Pavillion in Bexhill, East Sussex. A place I do a lot of photography.
	Paris in France is an amazing place for photographs, I wish I could get there more often, but its too far to travel, even to get photos like this infrared one of the Eiffel Tower.

The most noticeable ways that infrared photos differ from standard photographs ones are:

1. Due to the extreme dark red of the filter effects the results you get from each colour.

This is a standard colour wheel showing the main colours of the visible spectrum:

If you converted it to a true greyscale image using something like photoshop with all colours balanced you would get:

If you used an infrared filter, no matter if it's a 'real' one or a software based one, like this one converted with Paint Shop Pro you would get something more like this:

As you can see blues become almost black, greens become almost white and reds stay the same. Due to this a lot of very green landscapes turn out looking more like snow scenes and skies have much more striking contrast.

2. As the filters are very dark in increases the length of exposure and that can create a dreamy glow around bright objects.

3. Infrared photos due to the length of exposure and film speeds often have a lot of noise / grain.

I think infrared is a bit of an acquired taste and like a certain spread something you either love or hate, I personally love it!

Copyright

This guide was 100% created by Dean Thorpe of Aspex Design, so please feel free to link to it if you think it is useful, but PLEASE do not copy it and use it on your own site, it took a lot of work to create. If you want to print it out for educational reasons then that is fine, just don't claim you created it or make profit out of it. Sorry to sound negative, but I have had a few bad experiences with people selling my creations on eBay!

Paint Shop Pro is copyright of Coral - Photoshop is copyright of Adobe
The names are used here purely for non profit educational purposes, I have no connection with either company.