I’ve covered the surreal appearance of false-color infrared photography a few times on Spoon Graphics in tutorials, videos and a showcase of beautiful examples. Authentic infrared photos are captured using infrared film, or digitally using an infrared lens, but the overall style and aesthetic can also be simulated with some tweaks to a normal photograph in Adobe Photoshop. Instantly apply a variety of IR colour effects to your images with my free collection of Photoshop Actions. There are 8 Actions to choose from, each resulting in a unique inverted colour effect.
In false-color infrared photos the reds, blues and greens are reversed, so scenes with foliage and trees appear as a vibrant pinks, yellows or blues rather than green, which often looks like the photograph was taken on another planet! Choose an Action from the set and click the Play icon to instantly process your own photos with vibrant colour adjustments. You can choose from Red, Yellow, Purple, Pink and Orange hues; a Black and White version, which mimics the luminance of the more common monochrome IR photography; plus a Faded and Surreal option, which produce enhanced or subdued variants of the effect.
I fell in love with infrared photography while I was in college in the 70’s. Ektachrome Infrared was in my camera almost as much as normal film. Without a filter it turned the world magenta and greyish-orange, similar to the second image above. With a #25 Deep Red filter, it yeilded foliage of bright red and skies of midnight blue, similar to the first image above.
It’s difficult to get those results with my digital infrared camera (although the results are great on their own merits). So I’m eager to try out these actions. Thank you.
Thank you for your comment Russell, it was great to read about your love of infrared photography from your college days!
This is a fantastic set of photo effect actions! Shared it on pinterest :)
Incredible effects . !! Thanks for the information.
Your article is helpful for me. Loved the post !!
Keep Posting !!
gorgeous! thank you
Wonderful effects! Thanks for sharing.
Just factual note: in digital photography the best way for IR photo is modify chip of your camera (usually some older, unused one) it’s not depend on “infrared lenses”. You can use IR filter also, but exposition times are long and sometimes are not usefull. Anyway your job is nice :-) Thanks.
These will be a nice addition to my library to play around with and have some fun, since I love shooting outdoor and landscape photography-Ta!
Thanks alot
Thanks so much Chris.
Thanx a lot!
These look great! Thank you!
I love coloured Infrared images. I find them so surreal and almost alien like.
Thanks for sharing this!
This makes the third time I have seen featured pieces about Infra-red! LOL
These are ‘lovely’!
Thank you!
This is an awesome color effect. I love coloured Infrared images. Thank You so much ! for sharing with us.
Really excellent article about photo effect, Thanks for sharing with us.
Awesome post, I like it so much!