A quick and easy way to take this image and make it look like it was shot on infrared film would be to make a grayscale conversion and then add the diffuse glow filter. And in order to do this in the most flexible manner possible, I want to start by adding an Adjustment layer, the bottom of the layers panel. I'll click on the Adjustment Layer icon. And I'll choose the Black & White Adjustment Layer. Then we can select from one of the presets. For example, I could use the infrared preset.
In this case I think it makes it a little bit too extreme of a conversion. So I'm going to select my targeted adjustment tool by clicking on the icon. And then I'm going to click and drag to the left in order to reduce the amount of brightness that was applied to the yellows. Or Basically to move the slider to the left so that when Photoshop converts my yellow tones to Gray Scale it doesn't make them so light. Am I also want to take down the sky a little bit more, so I'll click and drag to the left there and you can see that the blues are dragging down.
I'm seeing a little bit of banding in the sky, and that's a result of this being a JPEG file. So this is one of the things you'll want to watch out for. If you do save your files as JPEG you are compressing them, and when you have a sky like this that really doesn't change its color much over a large distance, one of the things that you might see is this kind of banding. But if you've working with own raw files most likely your not going to get this banding. If you do you can just back off a little bit on the sliders to see if that banding will go away. But in this case I want it to be rather extreme so I'm definetly going to bring the blue and cyans down.
Not only that, but I'm going to be adding a filter that adds grain and noise into the sky. So that's going to help hide that. Now let's collapse the properties panel. And now I want to add the difuces glow filter. Before we go to the filter menu, let's do two things. One, we need to click on the Background Layer and convert it to a smart object. We'll use our contact sensitive menus. On the Mac, we can hold down the control key and then click on the word background or on Windows we can use our right mouse click and then convert this to a smart object.
Some of the filters actually use your foreground and background colors here on your toolbar. So we're also going to want to tap the d key in order to get our default colors, which will put black as the foreground and white as the background. That way when I choose the Filter menu and we go into Filter Gallery, when I go under the Distort Filters and I select Diffuse Glow. Photoshop will use the black and white in order to create this glow, so if you've come in here before and had some odd colors in here, it's probably because of your foreground and background color.
Now let's use the Cmd key on the Mac or Ctrl key on Windows and tap the 0 key in order to fit this in window. If we want to see it a little bit larger we can collapse the list of filters to choose from now that we've already selected ours, and then we can change the graininess, glow amount and clear amount. So again, if I want to make sure that I'm covering up that posterization in the sky... I'll want to add a lot of grain if we move the glow amount all the way to left and the clear amount all the way to the right you can really see that the only change that's being made is the additional grain but as we move the glow amount to the right we'll start to see our highlight glow.
As we move the clear amount to the left, we can start to see a glow in the midtones and the rest of the image depending on how much we add. So let's back off a little on the glow amount. One of the things you'll notice of course is that we're actually viewing the image in color here, and that's because we are working on that smart object On the background area which is in codes. Under the black and white adjustment layer that we have it on top, that's converting this image to grayscale.
So, that's why we're seeing it in color here. So, we'll click okay. Now we can see that Photoshop is showing it to us. You're previewing it as grayscale. But, remember that's because we've got this Black & White Adjustment Layer. If I don't want to see that, we can toggle it off, or we can toggle it on. This is a nice way to create kind of that infrared look. But of course, the best part about Photoshop, is that because we're doing all of this in a non destructive manner, we can experiment an change other things without worrying, about ruining this effect.
So for example, I might want to decrease the opacity, of the black an white adjustment layer. I'll grab the opacity slider and just back off a little bit to reintroduce a little bit of color into this image. So there you have it, an easy way to take your image to grayscale and add a diffused glow to emulate infrared with our own creative color twist.
Author
Updated
10/6/2014Released
6/17/2013- Using Bridge to batch rename files and add keywords and metadata to photos
- Viewing, rating, filtering, and creating collections to isolate your best work
- Comparing raw and JPEG file formats
- Retouching and automating workflow with Camera Raw
- Navigating documents and the Photoshop interface
- Understanding file formats, resolution, canvas size, and print size
- Cropping, straightening, transforming, warping, scaling, and resizing images
- Selecting, stacking, aligning, and grouping layers
- Making precise selections using the Marquee, Lasso, and Brush tools
- Using Refine Edge, Quick Selection, and layer masks to isolate soft edge objects
- Improving tone, contrast, and color selectively
- Converting to black and white and tinting images
- Retouching blemishes, smoothing skin, whitening teeth, and brightening eyes
- Retouching with the Liquify, Content-Aware Fill, Healing Brush, and Patch tools
- Merging multiple exposures
- Making nondestructive changes with Smart Filters
- Adding texture, edge effects, and drop shadows with blend modes
- Working with type
- Creating, modifying, and combining shapes using the Shape tools
- Adding layer effects
- Saving and sharing images via contact sheets, web galleries, and Save For Web
- Editing video and audio clips
- Panning and zooming still photos
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
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Q: This course was updated on 01/16/2014. What changed?
A: When Creative Cloud applications are updated, we refresh our training to make sure it covers the latest features and interface changes from Adobe. This update covers changes to Camera Raw, including nondestructive cropping, workflow and output settings, and the ability to save multiple files automatically.
Q: This course was updated on 6/18/2014. What changed?
A: In June 2014 Adobe released new features for Photoshop CC and added enhancements to several existing features. We added movies to introduce the new Focus Mask and Blur Gallery features, and changed several movies to reflect updates to instant type preview, font search, Typekit, Liquify, Content-Aware Fill, Adobe Camera Raw, and Smart Guides.
Q: This course was updated on 10/06/2014. What changed?
A: We updated this course to reflect the October 2014 changes to Photoshop CC. There are 16 new movies, which are indicated by the "(CC 2014.1)" tag that appears next to their names.
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Adobe Photoshop
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What is Photoshop?1m 42s
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Introduction
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Welcome1m
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Installing Adobe Bridge1m 23s
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What's new1m 26s
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1. It Begins in Bridge
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What is Adobe Bridge?3m 3s
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2. Whittling Down to Keepers
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Saving images in collections3m 52s
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Rating and labeling images4m 31s
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Using smart collections3m 39s
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3. Camera Raw Essentials
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Choosing output settings3m 34s
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4. Fixing Common Problems Quickly with Camera Raw
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Fixing blown-out highlights5m 42s
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Correcting lens distortion5m 17s
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Sharpening details7m 23s
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5. Retouching and Using Creative Techniques with Camera Raw
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Adding a radial gradient6m 35s
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6. Automating Camera Raw
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7. Photoshop Interface Essentials
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Managing panels5m 1s
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8. Documents and Navigation
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Arranging documents3m 37s
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9. Digital Image Essentials
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Understanding file formats8m 26s
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10. Cropping and Transformations
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Using crop options4m 20s
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Warping images4m 48s
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11. Working with Layers
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Exploring layer basics13m 25s
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12. Selections and Layer Masks
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Combining selections6m 40s
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Selecting with Focus Mask3m 10s
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13. Tone and Color Correction with Adjustment Layers
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Starting with a preset2m 36s
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14. Additional Options for Tone and Color Correction
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15. Retouching Essentials
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Taming flyaway hair4m 53s
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16. Combining Multiple Images
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17. Essential Filters
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Overview of filters3m 3s
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18. Essential Blend Modes
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19. Type Essentials
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Exploring character (point) type11m 58s
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Adding type on a path7m 3s
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Warping type2m 36s
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20. Basic Shape Layers
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Using the shape tools13m 45s
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Custom shape layers6m 15s
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Adding a keyline to an image4m 13s
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21. Essential Layer Effects and Styles
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Adding a drop shadow effect8m 57s
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22. Sharing Images
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Creating contact sheets4m 29s
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Creating PDF presentations3m 25s
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Saving for the web3m 49s
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23. Video
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Working with video clips12m 14s
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Conclusion
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Next steps1m 4s
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Video: Creating an infrared look with Diffuse Glow