Shooting in infrared can transform a scene into something magical and otherworldly! A creative way to alter the look of an infrared image is to create the blue sky effect by "channel swapping" colors. This is very easy to do with the Channel Mixer in Photoshop. Images created with converted cameras using the enhanced (665nm) or super color (590nm) infrared filters work beautifully for this technique. Certain standard R72 type infrared images such as the one above work too. Here's how you do it..
Step 1: Choose the Channel Mixer from the Adjustment Panel.
Step 2: Adjust the source channels, moving the red channel slider from 100% to 0, and increase the blue channel slider from 0 to 100%. (You can type in the values).
Step 3: Change the output channel to blue, and increase the red source channel to 100%.
Step 4: Change the blue source channel to from 100% to 0% to exchange the blue channel for the red.
Save this as a preset so you never have to go through these steps again! Click on the small preset options box next to the preset drop down menu "Save Channel Mixer Preset" (at the top of the channel mixer). I saved my settings as “Blue Sky" for easy reference and a one click adjustment.
You can use a Hue Saturation adjustment layer to enhance the color of your blue sky. Choose the Blue or Cyan Channel and adjust the Hue slider to the desired shade of blue. Make great pictures! ~ Deb
