550nm IR filter
Lately, I’ve been interested in infrared photography (I even modified by E-P1 for full spectrum use), and I’d like to share one of my special tricks for other Lightroom users interested in infrared photography.

I have several IR filters for blocking visible lights, e.g. 550nm, 720nm and 950nm filters. The 950nm filter produces grayscale IR images, but the other filters do produce fake colors, which sometimes make the result much more interesting.

Here’s an example of a shot with 550nm filter, processed as follows, from left to right:

  1. Daylight white balance. The filter has a heavy orange tint
  2. Custom WB, autotone. The tint is gone and sky now shows as dark yellow.
  3. Profile: RedBlueSwap, Custom WB, autotone. Sky is now blue and you can start adjusting photo further.

irkoivu

While this is an old trick in Photoshop, you cannot do this in Lightroom by default. In order to create this effect, I’ve built special Camera Profiles which have color matrices with reversed components. The profiles were created using dcpTool by Sandy McGuffog.

After installing the custom profiles, you will have a new option in Lightroom’s Camera Calibration Profile pulldown menu: RedBlueSwap. Selecting this option will reverse the red and blue channels and hopefully you can skip the slow “Edit in Photoshop” step.

lr_calibration_panel_redblueswap

Installation

Unzip the zip file and copy redblueswap folder to Camera RAW’s profile folder, which is located under your home folder:

Mac OSX:
/Users/yourname/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles

Windows:
C:/Users/yourname/App Data/Roaming/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles

After copying, you need to restart Lightroom before the new profiles are available.

Download

redblueswap_20150909.zip

Sep 20 2015: Updated to match cameras supported by Lightroom 6.1.1

Comments

comments

47 Comments

  1. I have been wondering how I could do a red/blue swap in Lightroom 5 and had decided that it just was not going to happen. My IR’s would have a brownish sky or all black and white, that was that. I’m not sure exactly if I did it right, but my sky can be blue now. I didn’t think I unzipped it and I’m still not sure if I did, but copied it to the address you have here for windows. There is a red/blue swap in my camera profiles now and the sky does get blue. Have to get used to it probably to get the rest of the image in the colors I want. I can take photos, but I’m medium at getting the computer to do what I want it to. So what I have to say to you is simple: Thank You……

    1. OS X 10.9.5 and Lightroom 5.6, which are currently the latest versions. Should work with most LR versions, but I have not tested it with other versions than what I currently use.

      Adobe seems to put camera and lens profiles all over your hard drive nowadays (they are under /Library in previous LR versions and Photoshop, but nowadays under LR Application directory), but I guess the most correct place for custom profiles is under the home directory.

  2. Hi Jarno – I’m grateful for the information you’ve shared. I also am using the most current versions of LR and the MacOS. After trying as many places (both logical and pure guesses) I’m not successful installing this valuable profile. If you can think of any other solutions I’m willing to give it a whirl.
    Thank you!

  3. Re my previous email the other good thing about using lightroom is you can easily create a preset and then get a good quick starting point from your raw files

    again thanks Mick

  4. Hi,
    I just tried your brilliant add-on. with the d70s profile for my camera.
    Unfortunetly, after swapping channels, I cannot reajust correctly WB. It seems to swap it also… Good try.

    Thank for your work anyway

  5. My wife came upon your post regarding the use of your redblueswap_dcp.zip file in order to swap the red and blue channels in Lightroom. We are using an iMac with Mavericks 10.9.5, and Lightroom v5.7. We had to unhide files to be able to see the entire path – /Users/yourname/Library/Application/Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles – in order to drag and drop the folder into the proper folder. We tried doing that both with Lightroom already opened, and then restarting it, as well as with Lightroom closed, dragging and dropping the folder into the proper destination, and then opening Lightroom, both ways without being able to access the redblue swap option under Camera Calibration. Are we missing something or did we do something wrong that is preventing this from working the way it should?

    1. Note that it is “Application Support” with a space, not Application/Support directory.

      One way to find the correct folder is to use Finder, select Go -> Go to Folder (or Shift+Cmd+G) and type “~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles” (without quotes), but I don’t know if the path exists by default, if it doesn’t, you will get an error message. Under this directory, you can either have a redblueswap subdirectory, or just the .dcp file for your camera model.

    2. Yes I am currently having the same issue, I am running on OS X LR 5.7. I also opened up raw file and my camera is for the Pentax K3 as listed. I still only get lists for adobe standard and embedded. Someone please help 🙁

      Restarted several times…

  6. Hi, I’m using the fujifilm x100T in lightroom 5.7. Any chance you could provide the dcp profile for this model? It looks like it works fine for x100s.

    Many thanks

    Julian

  7. Love all the plug-ins!
    I’m also having problems installing this. Have installed it under library/applicationsupport/adobe/CameraRaw
    and cannot change the camera profile in the camera calibration section. All I get is “embedded”. If you could help me out with this it would be great. Love all your work, its been super helpful in the creative process!

  8. Hi, thanks for the preset – I have tried it and it turned my images purple – not quite the natural look I was looking for – am I possibly doing something wrong?

    1. This is a special profile for swapping red and blue channels, it’s for special use only and thus it requires some extra effort. After changing profile, you will need to re-adjust white balance (press W and then click on area which should be grey in the photo). How the photo will look will depend heavily on the used filter and it is most useful with cameras modified for infrared use.

      1. Thank you very much for providing these profiles. I am an experienced photography enthusiast, and very keen to embrace false-colour IR photography (not just mono), but I flatly refuse to fork out for Photoshop just for the channel mixer when everything else I have ever wanted (or am ever likely) to do in post-processing can be achieved in Lightroom. So at first it seemed as though IR photography would be a non-starter for me. Then I discovered your profiles, after which I was happy to pull the trigger on an IR-converted Nikon D70s.

        Unfortunately, I have ended up with the same problem as Christine (image turns purple after applying the profile). I tried your suggestion of pressing ‘W’ and then clicking on an area in the photo that should be grey, and it had no effect whatsoever.

        I may be doing something wrong but, sadly, it’s already looking like I shall be returning my D70s for a refund and abandoning IR photography before I’ve barely got started.

        Any further suggestions? Thanks in anticipation.

        1. I’m currently looking into getting better swap profiles with more saturation. Can you email me a RAW sample at jarnoh@capturemonkey.com so I can take a look at what kind of color matrices your file needs.

  9. Ty for making these. I’ve been looking for a way to replace Kodak EIR. However I just upgraded to Nikon D750. I hope when you find the time are able to update your list.

  10. Thanks for this profile, it works like a charm!
    However, I have one problem, the colors are perfectly swapped, but I like to convert my images to a blue/gold look. When I take my white-balance sliders to the absolute max, it comes close, but the gold still looks more orange than yellow.
    I looked into the profile with dcpTool, and tried to adjust values, but without the result I’m looking for. I can’t find the logic in the values.
    Can you help me out with this?
    Thanks in advance!

  11. Jarno,

    I’ve never been able to get Lightroom to properly set white balance due to built in Adobe ACR limitations. I’ve always used Adobe’s DNG profile editor to generate a custom profile for getting the WB where it needs to be. How do you set WB in Lightroom when the profile is taken up by your Blue/Red swap? I’d love to use both and stay entirely in Lightroom. Thank you!

    1. The white balance is indeed a problem, depending on your filter, the standard color matrices might not give you enough range. You could try creating a red/blue swapped profile from your custom profile using dcpTool.

      The Red/Blue swap profiles use standard camera matrices, so they give you same old range, I’ve been thinking about creating a set with more radical matrix coefficients, but that needs some additional experimentation, and I haven’t yet found the time and/or inspiration for it.

  12. Yes I am currently having the same issue, I am running on OS X LR 5.7. I also opened up raw file and my camera is for the Pentax K3 as listed. I still only get lists for adobe standard and embedded. Someone please help 🙁

    Restarted several times…

    1. B&H does still sell the B+W 099 filter. This filter is identical to Red #25 which has the same transmission curve.

  13. I can’t seem to get this profile to load. I can see it in the Camera Profile folder but it doesn’t appear in LR. I have restarted LR several times but still no luck. Any suggestions? Thanks

  14. Getting an error message as soon as I download it. Says winzip can’t unzip because there is a problem with the file name. Help please.

    1. There were some extra files starting with dot in the package, I’ve deleted them, see if it helps.

      Getting a better unzip program would be another option.

  15. This is what I’ve been looking for (with no success until now).
    I will need to see if it will work with my Olympus C2020Z Camedia

    1. I don’t think C2020Z shoots RAW, which is needed in order to change the color profile. It’s super old in camera years 🙂

  16. This looks exactly like what I was looking for! Thanks for building this, Jarno!

    But I am shooting on a D750 and using LightRoom 6. I don’t see a D750 file in the Zip.

    Any idea if/when you’ll be putting out a new version with updated camera models?

    I’m going to try it anyways when I get home tonight, but I doubt it’s going to work with my camera…

  17. Hi,
    The profile worked great with my Olympus OMD E-M5 but having changed to the Olympus OMD E-M5 Mark II the profile does not recognise it.

    Will there be an update soon to add this model?

    Regards

  18. Hi and thanks a lot for such a great thing !
    I tried decompiling some basic Camera Profiles and tried to edit the XML but I must confess that I don’t really understand anything. Can I learn how to do the channel swap ( or any other adjustments ) somewhere ? I’m really interested into this as I would like to have it directly in my camera with .pf3 files ( Canon Picture Style ). This way, I would directly be able to see my IR pictures with the channel swap as I take them thanks to the JPG that get along with the RAW file.
    Thanks again.

  19. Wonderful work you have done but I have a white balance problem that I believe many people also face with IR images.

    The range of white balance adjustment available within Lightroom is often insufficient with my Nikon D90 images shot with a 720nm conversion. I have got round this by creating a camera profile using Adobe DNG profile editor with a much cooler colour temperature setting. Using this profile, I can easily set a pleasing White Balance in lightroom but I cannot also get the benefit of your red/blue swap profile as only one lightroom profile can be applied to an image. Could you tweak your red/blue swap profile with a much cooler colour temperature to get round this problem? Or failing that, is it possible to red/blue channel swap using the Adobe DNG profile editor?

  20. Hi,
    Im having some trouble with this.
    I previously loaded the Nikon D70s profile and it worked a treat. Ive now put the D7000 profile in the same place as the D70s one but it isn’t working.
    Ive restarted Lightroom a few times but the setting just isn’t appearing, yet its still sowing on the D70s photos.
    Id appreciate any help or input as I’m lost without this tool.
    Thanks

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