Infrared Post Processing

So I recently bought a Neewer 720nm infrared filter for my Nikon D5300...and the results aren't great so far!

Here's one that went wrong, but still looks great (In my opinion anyway):



Naturally, playing with InfraRed filters, I wanted the deep blue skies and the pure white foliage...quite different to the result I got above.

I've had a play around and I have managed to get the blue skies part OK, but I can't get the whiteness on the trees / grass. They just go a kinda dull grey.

So far, I've tried the following:

-Daylight WB
-ISO100
-Shutter 4"
-Aperture f/8-10
-Filter on

This produced lots of nice red pictures, none of which I could do anything with. So I went away and had a read around the web. Next day, I tried the following:

-Custom WB (Set by taking a full frame photo of grass. Produced a great unfiltered picture with some bizarre colours!)
-ISO100
-Shutter 5-10"
-Aperture f/8-16
-Filter on

This enabled me to produce the above image and some (which I don't have on my works PC) with a really good, deep blue sky, but dull grey grass. In lightroom, I dropped the temp right down as far as it would go, and played with the Hue's a little to drop some of the orange / magenta tones. Then I moved to PS and did the colour palette switch (Reds for Blues and vice-versa). I reduced the saturation of the red hue and changed the Magenta hue to get the blue sky, boosted the saturation and changed the lightness a little. But I couldn't do anything to get the grass and leaves to go white.

I'm planning on going out again this evening, weather permitting, to try again. This time taking a Custom WB with the filter on and see if that improves it any, but I was hoping I could get some advice from the Masters of this site beforehand for any other tips / recommendations. Thanks.

I would say to start off with swapping the blue and red channels first as this is the most important part to get your initial image looking right before you do any further tweaks. The two photo's below show the original file and one with the blue and red and red and blue channel swapped, with only a few minor tweaks afterwards.

PS You are also shooting at near sunrise/sunset which doesn't help and the maximum IR light is available when the sun is directly overhead (ie noon) on a sunny day.

It says your shutter speed was 25/10. Is that 2.5 seconds or is it just showing incorrectly?

Secondly, I've put some of them straight into PS and done the colour swap (I've even saved a preset) and I just get complete blues. No whites in the trees, as you've got there.

Is this literally just down to the sun not being directly overheard, or am I getting something else wrong with the setup?

Yes correct at 2.5 seconds as the IR720nm filter is very dark. So this length of exposure is normal at midday in full sun. It's more than likely that you are shooting into the sun at the wrong time of day, midday is best for the most IR wavelengths. The photos I posted were taken at 12.22pm. iso 100, f4.2, 2.5 secs.

I had my camera in the car yesterday, so I skipped out of work for twenty minutes and had a go. Haven't had chance to process them yet as the wife was hogging the laptop last night. But I had nice subshine from behind me, lots of greenery, and a 4-5 second exposure. So I'll see what they come out as. Thanks.