I had a few requests about the processing that I used in my 'Cloisters at Laycock Abbey' image so I put together a short tutorial on the thinking and processing that I used.

All my images start life in Adobe Lightroom. All the digital shots that I take are in Raw and Lightroom is a great way to manage the conversion from Raw to Photoshop or Jpeg. Usually the adjustments present in Lightroom are enough for 90% of the images I post on my blog, however after playing with this image for a while, while it was heading in the direction I was wanting it just did not spin my wheels... so it was off to Photoshop.

Keeping the version I tweaked in Lightroom I made a virtual copy, removed the effects and then selected the 'Edit in Photoshop CS3' option in Lightroom. This transfered the original colour version into Photoshop. While I could have transfered the Lightroom version, I really was not sure where the image was heading, so colour gives me more options.

Now that the file is not Photoshop CS3 I applied a B&W Adjustment layer and a curves layer to get the image back to what I was seeing in Lightroom.

First thing was to correct the distortion in the image. Really there is no way to avoid this when shooting wide angle (unless you purchase an expensive Tilt/Shift lens), however Photoshop makes it pretty easy to fix using the Free Transform Tool. Just hit Apple-A to select all, then Apple-T to free transform. Holding down Apple and dragging the corner points allows you to distort the image outside the image boundaries.

Now the parallel lines are all parallel, it was time for a bit of dodging and burning. Now there are lots of different ways to do dodge and burn in Photoshop, however my preference when doing subtle work is to use a overlay layer and the dodge and burn tool (if I am doing heavy dodge and burn I usually use a transparent layer and the brush tool with a featured brush with low opacity). To make the dodge and burn layer hit Shift-Apple-N to bring up the new layer dialog and choose Mode:Overlay and put a checkbox in the Fill with Neutral color option. The reason I like the dodge/burn tool is that the effect cumulates differently to the brush tool and does not seem to require me to lift the pen as often as the brush tool)

Now I use a tablet for Photoshop work (not a expensive Wacom, just an old Genius model that happens to have some OSX drivers) so I just paint with the dodge or the burn tool, adjusting the brush size with the [] keys (while the tablet is pressure sensitive I don't use this). I keep the exposure pretty low (around the 10%) and slowly build the effect until I like it - usually it is increasing the local contrast by burning in the shadows. If I don't like what I have done, I can remove the effected area using the paint brush painting with 50% gray)

Looking better, but I am still not completely happy - then I remembered a great book by John Mason that I purchased in the UK called 'Haunted Heritage' that consisted of infrared photos of English Heritage sites in the UK and started thinking about an IR effect.

My image does not have any green so I don't really need to worry about converting green to white (which incidentally I could have done using the B&W Adjustment Layer) but I want the soft blur and the large grain structure characteristic of Infrared Film. Most of the tutorials I have seen on the net about IR in Photoshop use a Gaussian blur layer - however I prefer to use the Distort->Diffuse Glow filter.

First thing is to drop the 16bit file down to 8bit (which is the only bad thing about the Diffuse Glow filter) and then press Apple-Option-Shift-E to create a new layer containing all the previous layers (in this case the background, B&W adjustment layer and Doge/Burn layer). If you are running CS3 you could convert this to a Smart Layer if you wanted to be able to edit the glow later. Apply the Distort->Diffuse Glow filter.

Adjust the sliders to give you a slightly over glowed effect. I will apply the grain laster so I sent the grain amount to 0.

Now tweak the opacity of this layer until it gives you the effect you are after.

To apply the film grain I don't use a Photoshop filter, instead preferring to use the grain file provided by Petteri. Just drag this grain to create a new layer, set the blending mode to overlay and then hit Apple-T to free transform.

As I was planning on putting this on my photoblog I sized the grain larger than normal so that it would be visible in the final small size (you can see the 100% view at the bottom)

Saving this Photoshop file transfered it back to Lightroom where I cropped it slightly to get rid of a few distractions.

Then selected one of my sepia split tone adjustments to give a slightly warm tone to the image (if there was a Split Tone adjustment layer in Photoshop I would have used that)

And that is it - my version of an IR effect in Photoshop.