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Infrared photography (also referred to as just IR) has been around for many years, but now with digital photography and Photoshop, creating the effect digitally is on the top of a lot of people's photography effects wish lists. There are some third-party plug-ins you can buy that will give you pretty decent IR effects, but you don't have to go that route. You can create some amazing infrared effects, both black and white and color, from right within Photoshop using the Channel Mixer (which is what we're going to do in this tutorial).
Before digital, you'd have to use special infrared film (Kodak made a popular brand of black-and-white infrared slide film) which had extended sensitivity to red colors that fall beyond what the naked eye (or traditional color film) could see. This IR film made blue skies look almost black, but it would keep the clouds looking white. It made green trees and grass look almost white, and if you used it on portraits, skin tones (eyes and teeth) took on an otherworldly feel, as well.
So, here are two different ways to achieve IR effects in Photoshop that people would swear were done with real IR film (which, by the way, is still made by a number of classic film manufacturers, including Kodak, who makes a High-Speed Infrared Black-and-White film, along with Ilford's SFX 200 IR film, and Maco's IR 820c film).
Step 1. OPEN THE PHOTO, THEN ADD A CHANNEL MIXER ADJUSTMENT LAYER
Open the photo you want to convert into an infrared image. The infrared look is often used with landscape photography (although you see it on portraits in some cases), so we're using a landscape photo here, with plenty of green grass, and some wisps of clouds in the sky. You'll use the Channel Mixer to create your infrared effect, so choose it from the Create New Adjustment Layer pop-up menu at the bottom of the Layers palettethe Channel Mixer dialog is shown in the next step.
Step 2. LEAVE THE RED AT +100%, INCREASE THE GREEN TO +200%, LOWER THE BLUE TO -200%
Generally, in landscape photos (like this one), we're trying to maximize the amount of green in the image, so we're going to pump up the green. Then we'll balance things out to where the values add up to 100% by subtracting from the Red and Blue channels. (Note: When we did our black-and-white conversions earlier, we weren't worried about adding up to 100%, but in infrared, if they don't add up to 100%, you'll have a color tint when you're done.) So, leave the Red at +100, for Green enter +200, and for Blue enter -200, but don't click OK yet.
Step 3. TURN ON THE MONOCHROME CHECKBOX, THEN LOWER THE CONSTANT TO PRESERVE HIGHLIGHTS.
Now, click the Monochrome checkbox at the lower-left corner of the dialog (as shown here) to convert the photo to black and white. If the whites in your image are blown out (they were in this image), lower the Constant slider until the whites aren't so blown out (I had to lower it to -34%). You can now click OK, and you've got a black-and-white infrared effect. You can stop at this point, or if you want a color infrared effect, go on to the next step (you'll want to continue on anyway, because we do a slightly different infrared technique after that).
Step 4. FOR A COLOR INFRARED EFFECT, CHANGE THE ADJUSTMENT LAYER'S BLEND MODE TO LIGHTEN
To bring the color effect into your black-and-white infrared, just change the blend mode of your Channel Mixer adjustment layer to either Lighten (as shown here) or Screen (if you choose Screen, lower the opacity until it looks right). As an optional step, you can add the white "glow" of classic film infrared photography by pressing X to set your Foreground color to white, flattening the image, then going under the Filter menu, under Distort, and choosing Diffuse Glow. Try setting the Graininess at 3, the Clear Amount to 15, then slowly drag the Glow Amount slider to the right until you get a slight glow without blowing out the highlights. Now, on to an alternate method.
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