Processing RAW using DxO - post your samples and tips - Part II

I've started doing some infrared photography, shooting with a full-spectrum M200 and various infrared filters.

Super-color IR photography involves swapping the red and blue channels, usually using something like photoshop or other software's channel mixer.

I couldn't find info on how to swap channels using DxO PhotoLab 5, so I spent many hours learning how to do it in Adobe Lightroom and darktable. This was really a pain, as it involved exporting the file to DNG format, pulling it into Lightroom, using a special color profile, making the swap, exporting the file again, and then doing final processing in DxO.

I was really wishing there is a way to do this with DxO PL5!

After doing lots of research and playing with the software, it turns out to be ridiculously simple to do a red-blue channel swap for color infrared --- you just have to know what to do!

1. Open your color infrared image in DxO PL5, captured with either a full-spectrum-modified camera using the appropriate IR filter, or a dedicated color-IR-modified camera.

A 550-nm filter gives you the most infrared 'super color', 590 nm and Hoya Red 25A filters give you 'standard IR color', and 650 and 720 nm filters still give you some color to work with. Deep IR filters such as 850 nm and 950 nm filters pretty much yield B&W images.

2. Go to the Customize tab to edit the image, and choose the 'Color' tab so you can see the color controls

3. Under the 'HSL' controls, click the 'White' button to adjust the color globally

4. Grab the 'outer ring' of the HSL control and swing it 180 degrees so that it is opposite its starting position. (See attached screen shots for before/after positions).

That's it! Your image is now color swapped.

Note that as in Adobe lightroom, after doing the swap, the other color controls have the opposite effect than they did before: for example, increasing the 'yellow' saturation will actually increase what appears to be the 'blue' saturation in the image you see.

Note also that you can fine-tune the hue of the color swap nicely this way ---- I find that a 180 degree swap makes foliage a little too pink for my taste, so I tune it to a position slightly different than 180 from its original position.

Here are screen shots of the one control you change to do the swap:

Full-spectrum modified Canon M200, Ef-M 11-22, Hoya 25A red filter, 11mm, f4, 1/250s, ISO 100 - Colors out of camera (color channels not swapped)

Full-spectrum modified Canon M200, Ef-M 11-22, Hoya 25A red filter, 11mm, f4, 1/250s, ISO 100 - Color channels swapped by moving DxO PL5 HSL control's 'white' outer slider by 180 degrees