Learn how to process an infrared photo.

To take the original photo, you’ll need a camera that can “see” infrared (take a picture of your TV remote control in action to see if a dot shows up from the sending end). With any luck, you’ll end up with an infrared photo like this:

An unprocessed infrared photo looks like this.

Load the photo into Photoshop and follow these steps:

1. Choose Image > Adjustments > Autolevels. The image will now look like the one below, which is interesting in its own right.

2. Next, choose Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer. With the Red output channel selected, you’ll see that the Red slider is set at 100% and the Green and Blue sliders are both at 0%, as shown below.

3. Set the Red slider’s value to 0% and the Blue slider’s value to 100%.

4. Choose Blue Output Channel, and set the Red slider to 100% and the Blue slider to 0%. In effect, you’ve swapped the red and blue channels and left the green channel untouched, as you can see in the image below.

5. Click OK to apply the change.

6. Choose Image > Adjustments >Hue/Saturation.

7. In the Edit box choose the Green channel.

8. Slide the Saturation slider to 0 and click OK. Desaturating the green channel often improves some color infrared shots, but your results will vary. Your final image will look like this: