Photoshop Channel Editing Help

[emorydunn]

I recently got a book on infrared photography and it had some tips on editing the photos. The method I tried out was converting my photo to Lab Colour and then removing all channels except the "Lightness" channel.

I did some playing around and decided I liked my photo with both "Lightness" and "b' on. But I can not figure out how to save my image with just those two channels on.

Here's a low res version of the PSD that you can play with is you want.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/28756/IR Tree_small.psd

I really like the look that having both channels gives, but as I said I couldn't make it work. I must have fiddled with it for an hour at least. So any help would be great!

 

[Phrasikleia]

Hmm. Tough one. I could get it to match the tonality, but minus the tint. So then I just added the tint with an adjustment layer. Here's what I did:

Choose "Split Channels" from the channels palette menu. Close 'a', since you don't want that one. Then go to 'b' and from layers palette menu, choose "duplicate layer" and target "lightness." Then go to "lightness" and in the layers palette, have 'b' (now called background copy) blend with the background layer with Color Burn.

Then it's just a matter of adding a tint to get that sepia look. Do that with the layer adjustment of your choice.

Hope that helps.

 

[emorydunn]

Ok, I followed your advice, although I'm not quite sure that is looks right:
Is this what you had before you added the adjustment layer?

EDIT: Never mind, the reason it wasn't working is it was still in greyscale. A quick switch to RGB and everything seems to be working. The only problem I can see is the sky is black.

 

[Phrasikleia]

No, when I did it, it came out looking exactly like Lab minus the 'a' channel, except it didn't have that hint of color.

 

[emorydunn]

No, when I did it, it came out looking exactly like Lab minus the 'a' channel, except it didn't have that hint of color.

That's odd. Your's didn't have a black sky? I think solved the problem though and I have it looking almost how I want it. I just need to play around with the colours a bit more. Thanks for the help.

One more question, what's the order of your layers and which one has the colour burn applied to it?

 

[Phrasikleia]

That's odd. Your's didn't have a black sky? I think solved the problem though and I have it looking almost how I want it. I just need to play around with the colours a bit more. Thanks for the help.

One more question, what's the order of your layers and which one has the colour burn applied to it?

I didn't save my results, but I believe the uppermost layer was 'b.' Sorry I can't be more helpful. There's probably an easier way, but that was all I could figure out. I'm glad you got a good result in the end, though.