Adobe Photoshop Tutorial: Infrared Photo Effect
Learn Photoshop with Adobe Photoshop Tutorials at Photoshop Essentials.com
Step 3: Apply The Gaussian Blur Filter To The Green Channel
With the Green channel selected in the Channels palette, go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, select Blur, and then select Gaussian Blur to bring up Photoshop's Gaussian Blur dialog box:
Drag the slider bar at the bottom of the Gaussian Blur dialog box left or right to increase or decrease the amount of blur you'll be applying. I'm using a low-resolution image for this tutorial since it's for the web, and for me, a Radius value of about 4.5 pixels gives me a nice soft blur effect. Your image will most likely be much higher resolution, especially if it came from a fairly recent digital camera, so you'll need to use a higher Radius value. Add a good amount of blurring while still being able to make out the basic details of the image, as I've done here:
Click OK when you're done to exit out of the Gaussian Blur filter.
Step 4: Change The Blend Mode Of The Infrared Layer To "Screen"
Now that we've applied the Gaussian Blur filter to the Green channel, switch back to the Layers palette and, with the "infrared" layer still selected, change the blend mode of the layer from Normal to Screen. To do that, go up to the top of the Layers palette and click on the down-pointing arrow directly to the right of the word "Normal", which brings up a list of available layer blend modes. Click on "Screen" to select it:
Here's my image after changing the "infrared" layer blend mode to "Screen":
Already at this stage, the image is looking pretty cool, but we're not quite done yet. We're going to be using a Channel Mixer adjustment layer next.
Still scrolling through web pages? Get instant, unlimited access to our printable PDF eBooks!