I just started using this program and website. It was suggested I post an infrared image. I think I need to copy the DNG image here, along with the pp3 file. Not sure.
If this works, any advice, suggestions, etc., would be welcome!
Oops, I’m a new user, so I can’t copy the “pp3” file here, only one file. If I need to post the pp3 file, how can I add it?
L1030206.DNG (10.1 MB)
Thanks for sharing the raw file and your pp3. I started from your pp3, but didn’t change too much. In fact, I don’t know what you to expect. Anyways, here’s my take:
Hi, and thanks!
I just did the basics on my image, as I haven’t really learned how to do much else. I watched some videos tonight, so I’m learning.
I like the way you changed my image - the sky is much nicer, and the water also looks better. The overall color looks much more natural. Your colors are brighter, which looks nice! Now that I see what you did, I will try to adjust my original to look the same. All this is just for learning.
As to what I expect, I have no idea. I was taking a test image from my balcony, when the small boat came along so I grabbed that shot. The IR filter was on my Summicron 50mm. Everything came out red. By following some guidelines, I got to what you saw I did. I guess I’d like to copy your pp3 file to my iMac, to see the difference side by side. I have a feeling I can’t do that, unless you post a DNG pp3 - but all this is new to me.
Now that I have the basics going, I will take a few images with lots more trees and shrubbery, maybe some water, lots of sky, and end up with something more suited to IR.
I guess I “expected” the sky to turn to a deep blue, and the trees and bushes to turn to white. They are pretty the way they came out, but I thought IR made leaves white. I guess not.
Before I got involved here, I expected I would be sending a revised DNG image into Lightroom. Now I think I’m better off doing all my IR work in RawTherapee… but I’d still like to be able to export it into Lightroom for storage in the LR database. Is that even possible?
Aha! White balance on the clouds made the overall color more like what you did.
Oops, RawTherapee “quit unexpectedly”. Not sure why…
…how can I save what I’ve done, so if the computer crashes again, I don’t lose my work?
…and when I’m done, how do I save and close an image?
I think I got it to work. Here’s my new .pp3 file:
L1030206.DNG.pp3 (10.6 KB)
If RT is unstable on your computer, you can save your pp3 frequently. When you close your image, the pp3 saves all the current settings for the image.
Like you I kind of expected foliage to turn white, but I have no idea how to get this. When. Foliage is white, is the image still color, or do they turn the image to grey scale? Maybe the look of the foliage depends on the wavelength of the IR passthrough filter? Or if IR people turn their image to gray scale, maybe you can try and play in the “black and white” tool with the different filters.
Edit: it looks like white foliage is obtained in greyscale images. Also, can you tell us which filter your use? I susoect your filter lets too much visible light get in, and possibly a stronger filter would cut more visible light and let you expose longer and register more IR light on the sensor.
The filter is at least 40 years old, and has no markings. I have a much “blacker” filter that I bought five or six years ago - will get that out and tell you the filter info. I also need to get a step-up ring to use that on my lens(es).
I don’t want to copy this fellow, but here’s some examples of what an artist can do with IR:
Added later - my other filter is “F-PRO. B+W 52 093 IR”
If the filter you used for the first image you shared is not too dark, then it means that it lets a significant portion of visible light to record on the sensor (and now I realize that with 1/180sec exposure time, of course you have recorded a lot of visible light). You’ll have hard times to get the real “IR effect” with white foliage with that filter.
The other filter, the B+W 093 cuts wavelengths below 830nm, it means it is a strong IR filter and should get you the effect you’re after, but at the expense of longer exposure times (less light is going to hit the sensor, so you’ll need to expose longer).
What I’m using for a guide as to what the different filters may allow me to achieve is:
https://kolarivision.com/articles/choosing-a-filter/
My goal is to end up with brilliant, colorful images, but with the strange colors I used to get from Kodak Ektachrome film - so long ago. But I don’t really have anything I’m aiming for. I’m just trying to learn what can be done, and how to repeat it in the future.
Here is my edit in Rawtherapee, a downrez for web and a 1:1 crop.
I used the channel mixer to get a blue sky and bright yellow foliage, added wavelets to increase the local contrast and textures of the sky, and used vng4 demosaicing to eliminate the artifacts from the Infrared filtered light hitting the Bayer sensor, as well as false color suppression.
As there was a color swap between the red and blue channel, as well as correcting the original heavy color cast through aggressive RGB channel mixing, the denoising wasn’t working as intended, in terms of differentiating luma from chroma noise, so I rendered a tiff, and reuptook it in Rawtherapee to do the denoising after the heavy lifting with color changes had already been done. I also added more contrast with a second S-curve.
Whole image:
1:1 crop:
And the processing profiles: First for main processing (DNG in the file name) and another for denoising (tif in the file name):
L1030206.DNG.pp3 (11.5 KB)
L1030206.tif.pp3 (11.2 KB)
Very, VERY impressive. I’m really surprised that beautiful rendering was hidden in my image, and I had no way of “finding” it!
Regarding the first part, the colors, can I ‘open’ your settings and compare them to mine, side by side, so I can learn how you got the bright yellow foliage?
Presumably, I can re-open my original image, and do what you’ve done, to get a similar result? I think that would be very educational!
If I take other scenes, with the same camera, lens, and filter, are your settings likely to work in a similar way? Can I “apply” your settings to a different image?
Well, to study my settings, download the pp3 sidechain file: L1030206.DNG.pp3, and then open the raw file in Rawtherapee, and load the pp3 sidechain file through the RT menu system and apply it to the image, and you can see all my settings used in the file.
The most important part to getting this color effect is to use the channel mixer in the color tab, with the settings as pictured:
From there, add contrast and saturation to make the colors pop more.
Also, go to the raw tab and set the demosaicing algorithm to vng4, so that the pixels don’t look like a checker pattern up close (this might be only is necessary for the specific infrared filter you have, so if you get another infrared filter, play around with demosaicing algorithms.
As to getting this look on other infrared images, the most important thing is to do the channel mixer settings as shown above and experimenting with slight tweaks to the numbers, depending on what you are going for or variances of subject matter, and remember to switch the demosaicing algorithms to vng4.
