Artificial infrared style photography

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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 software. 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.

Here are a few examples of fake infrared pictures I have created:
Click on the photos for a bigger version

	Artificial infrared style photo: This is a view of Hastings Pier taken from the beach when the tide had just gone out.
	Artificial infrared style photo: This is a picture of Ashburnham Place, which is near Battle in East Sussex.
	Artificial infrared style photo: A beautiful tiger that I managed to photograph at Chessington.
	Artificial infrared style photo: A picture of a night time scene on the seafront at Southend in Essex.

Click here to see more of my infrared photos.

The most noticeable ways that infrared photos differ from normal 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 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 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!