Better IR Chrome for Sony Cameras with Picture Profiles

The IR Chrome filter produces the desired Aerochrome colors without the need to swap color channels. At least, it comes close but with some cameras it needs a little extra help. My recent discovery of film emulations for Sony Alpha cameras using Picture Profiles made me realize that a custom Picture Profile could probably be used to achieve better Aerochrome colors in-camera. In this post, I’ll demonstrate the Aerochrome Picture Profiles I created, explain how I process the raw images in Lightroom, and share some finished example images from a recent trip to northern New Mexico.

IR Chrome

The Kolari Vision IR Chrome filter provides a digital emulation of the iconic Aerochrome film. The filter was developed over a period of several years by French photographer Yann Philippe who later partnered with Kolari to produce the filter and make it available to infrared photographers. Yann’s work was based on the use of Canon cameras, and his photos clearly emulate the Aerochrome look. Just like the real film, the IR Chrome filter can produces striking results with vegetation turned to deep red, magenta, or pink, and skies ranging from dark cyan-blue to mostly normal looking depending on the ambient lighting and settings in the camera (or color filter in the case of the real film).

In my previous work creating Aerochrome-style images from photos captured with a 590 nm filter, it was often difficult to avoid producing artifacts in high contrast areas of the images, such as where vegetation and sky touch, because of the required swap of the color channels. In addition to simplifying post-processing, the IR Chrome filter provides superior image quality in many situations by avoiding the channel swap.

Not all camera sensors are the same, and when used on other brands of cameras, color variations do occur. Kolari states that Sony cameras in particular tend to create images where foliage appears more orange than red, and the images must be fine-tuned in post-production to achieve the desired Aerochrome look. However, a few simple adjustments in camera using Picture Profiles enable us to produce images similar to Yann’s straight out of camera. In fact, Picture Profiles can be used to create in-camera presets for different Aerochrome looks, from the iconic crimson red to Mosse’s vibrant pinks and magentas.

White Balance

Setting a proper white balance is key for obtaining consistent results in-camera. I’ve been in the habit of always carrying a gray card when shooting infrared so that I can easily set a custom white balance whenever needed. I always reset the white balance when changing IR filters or even when conditions change such as when shooting towards or away from the sun or when clouds roll in.

Picture Profiles

Sony Picture Profiles are settings that allow you to adjust the color, contrast, and dynamic range of the images created by the camera (JPGs). They are designed for use with video footage to provide more flexibility and creative control in post-production, but the settings also apply to camera JPGs for still photos without affecting the raw images. By adjusting the color settings for the Picture Profile, we can modify the look of the images shot with the IR Chrome filter. In addition to producing a JPG image with the desired look, I find the Picture Profiles also useful for my raw files because I can use the camera JPG as a reference for the colors when processing the raw image.

Classic Aerochrome

The look of Aerochrome film photos can vary wildly depending on the type of lens filter used and the shooting conditions, but to me the classic Aerochrome look renders vegetation with hues of deep saturated red, perhaps crimson, with vivid cyan skies. In the example below of the Rio Grande Gorge, I think the Picture Profile has nailed the look perfectly. My raw edit is close, but the reds are slightly off.

The Picture Profile settings for this look are:

• Black Level: -10
• Gamma: Still
• Color Mode: Pro
• Saturation: +20
• Color Phase: +7
• Color Depth: R +7, G 0, B +3, C +3, M +7, Y +7

Golden

The golden look is less popular for Aerochrome but is a nice look for many color infrared images.

The Picture Profile settings for this look are:

• Black Level: -10
• Gamma: Still
• Color Mode: Pro
• Saturation: +16
• Color Phase: -7
• Color Depth: R -7, G 0, B +3, C +3, M 0, Y -7

Other Looks

By comparing the settings above you can see that the main differences are in the Color Phase and Color Depth settings. Other looks can be achieved by changing these settings along with adjusting the custom white balance with a shift towards green or magenta.

Raw Processing

The ability to produce camera JPGs with a particular Aerochrome look is fantastic, but unfortunately the look does not carry over to the raw file. I’ve found it to be very difficult to achieve perfect Aerochrome colors in Lightroom (or Photoshop for that matter) for the raw images captured with my Sony a6500 and the IR Chrome filter.

I tried experimenting with a number of different approaches to adjusting the colors as noted in the caption for each of the example images in this post. These include:

• Color Calibration Panel: iteratively and gradually work with the red, green, and blue hue and saturation sliders to dial in the desired reds. Watch out for unwanted shifts to other colors, particularly blue skies.
• HSL Panel: work primarily with the red and orange hue and luminance sliders. Aqua and blue sliders can be used to fine-tune skies.
• Custom DNG Profile (similar to regular infrared DNG profile with white balance shifted by +50): With this profile, set a custom white balance in Lightroom on some clouds or gray concrete/rocks, then only a slight Hue shift for red (-20) and orange (-30) are needed for a lot of images to produce saturated crimson reds.
• LUT-based Profile (from Photoshop hue/saturation and color balance adjustment layers): When it works, the LUT-based profile produces excellent results with one click, but it can be hit or miss, plus it can require a lot of effort in Photoshop to set up the adjustment layers used to generate a LUT. Unlike the color swap LUTs needed for non-IR Chrome images, these LUTs are only shifting the colors and are much more forgiving.
• CLiR Panel in Photoshop: Tonee’s Color Twister tool in the CLiR panel produced really nice results with not a lot of effort. Unfortunately, the tool output is a new pixel layer so it could not be used to generate a LUT.

At this point, I can’t recommend a “best” approach for adjusting the colors as it seems to be different for each image. Right now, I’m leaning towards the DNG profile and LUT-based profile methods, although working with the CLiR panel in Photoshop always produces fantastic results particularly when finishing an image using one of the built-in “looks.” Note that with the profile methods, you can generally expect the profile to get the image 80-90% there, then the HSL and Calibration panels can be used to fine-tune the reds and blues.

More IR Chrome Examples

The images in the gallery below are examples of raw files captured with the IR Chrome filter and fully processed in Lightroom using the techniques described in this post.