My Digital Black & White Infrared Workflow

I shoot my infrared images with a Nikon Coolpix E5400 that has been converted to IR by swapping the IR blocking filter on the CCD with an R72 (89b) filter. Once all my shooting is complete, I use the following steps.

1. Upload all files to my computer. I use a folder with a specific name describing the subject.
2. Edit and delete any unwanted images using Explorer and the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. I usually don't bother to delete in the field as I spend enough time just waiting for the images to be written and I usually have a large enough media card. If I fill up my media card, I'll upload the files to my laptop when I get back to my car.
3. I also use Explorer and the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer to look at my photos. From there, I right-click the image and 'open with' to Photoshop.

Once in Photoshop 7:

Create initial image for printing

1. Crop the image - Crop tool set to 10in width and 8in height for a horizontal image; 8in width and 10in height for vertical; resolution set at 300 ppi
2. Desaturate color - Image > Adjustments > Desaturate
3. Adjust levels - Image > Adjustment > Levels - set black point, white point, then midtone point
4. Adjust contrast, if necessary - Image > Abdjustment > Brightness/Contrast
5. Spot with clone tool or healing brush - Use either the clone tool or healing brush to spot and remove unnecessary elements
6. Enhance 'wood effect' - Filter > distort > diffuse glow graininess set to 1, glow amount set to 1 or 2, depending on existing effect
7. Reduce noise - Filter > Neat Image > Reduce Noise - run the plug in
8. Zoom image to 100% - Cntl, Shift, +
9. Sharpen - Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask
10. Save as a tif file to new folder with LZW compression - File > Save As

Create image for web

1. Adjust image size - Image > Image Size resolution 72, size 600 horizontal, check Constrain Proportions, check Resample Image, set to Bicubic
2. Zoom image to 100% - Cntl, Shift, + (Cntl, Shift, - will zoom to a smaller image)
3. Watermark - Text tool to place watermark in lower right or left corner, text reads "© 2006 www.kzarts.com" in black
4. Move text into position with Move tool
5. Select Background layer, then select text layer again
6. Save as a jpg file to web folder with level 7 compression - File > Save As
7. Create transparency to watermark - Filter > Stylize > Emboss - set angle to 135, height to 3 pixels, and amount to 100%
8. Press Yes to popup about rasterizing text
9. Flatten the layers - Layer > Flatten image
10. Save as a JPEG to folder for web with compression level 7 - File > Save as

Create Thumbnail

I use a piece of software called Easy Thumbnails which I found on the web.

1. Open Easy Thumbnails, follow directions
   
2. Name new folder "thumbs"
   
3. Use the same file name for each photo file
   
4. Process