FYI Lightroom useless for Digital IR

This might be hard to explain for those who have not done any work in Digital IR RAW processing...

The Lightroom RAW processors white balance scale is limited in adjustability between 2K and 50K, so the "as shot" setting of a camera that has the correct custom white balance can not even be displayed "as shot" in the Lightroom interface.

Since Lightroom is limited to the range of 2K - 50K all IR shots with a CWB get "bumped" up to the 2K white balance within the limits of lightrooms own adjustability,. ie: top slider all the way to the left,. which is a setting of "2000" temp.

A properly adjusted camera with a custom white balance is far below 2000...

So all IR images, though they may be shot with white balance as low as 500 or 1000, can only be shown in LR with a 2K temp.. and in turn will only be out put or printed with this incorrect temp, which equals "all red" to the visual eye.

Phooey!

I even tried to type in lower numbers, and LR gives this message;
"A number between 2000 and 50000 is required"

Actually, BreezeBrowser is what's required!

Thanks for the heads up. I like to shoot IR once in a while and had been looking at Lightroom.

I suppose I should say, this will have little to no effect if you only shoot IR for B&W..

I forget that many shoot IR for B&W exclusively.
I make B&W conversions as well, but really enjoy working in the ethereal pastel color palette i get with digital IR,. at this point I still find BreezeBrowser to work best for this, but even with RSP or RSE, it would only "trash" the WB setting if one went try and adjust it.
If WB is left alone, then it remains true to the camera setting. And if you messed it up by getting it into the limitations of the RSE/P scale,. (1,800-12,500 in this case) then a simple click on the "as shot" button gets it back to normal.

I don't think many would use LR for IR anyway. Nearly all that I know that shoot IR go directly to PS... but this was good info to put out there.

I just tested, Bibble and ACR have the same WB limits (you can't adjust below 2000K). Bummer.

Not sure about the "As Shot" in those two...I guess I'll have to mess with that later and see.

Really dumb question as I'm just starting to look at PP software, but what is IR?

Infra Red,.

Jason, thanks for that info, I forgot about ACR, but the last time I used it was a while ago so i'm out of touch.

amonline wrote in post #3008782
I don't think many would use LR for IR anyway. Nearly all that I know that shoot IR go directly to PS... but this was good info to put out there.

Well, not now we won't! But might have otherwise

Seriously , I shoot RAW IR, and convert using breezebrowser..
I need to try DPP again, as I think DPP will behave like Breezebrowser ..

A little late bump here, but RawShooterPremium work with the IR WB.
I tried LR and you are right, wrong WB, the shot looks dull!

I know some of you have probably already figured this out and it really doesn't solve your problems but, if you use a different RAW convertor to do your WB, save as a TIFF and then import into lightroom you can continue with your non-destructive edits from there. Hopefully they will fix this for you soon. Although I think they are targeting a larger photographer base with their first updates so don't count on it.

Well its totally untrue, lightroom is wonderful for digital IR since the day Adobe released the DNG Profile editor.

I created 5 custom profiles yesterday, works like a charm !

Here's a link explaining what to do, scroll to section
Tutorial 4: Infrared-Modified Cameras and Unusual Lighting


http://labs.adobe.com …ofiles:Editor#t​utorial_ir


I strongly advise you to just start out with the profile supplied by the camera manufacturer, and choose the "Faithful" one (the more close to zero adjustments). Then on the "tone curve" tab, choose "linear". If you don't, you will lose a lot in the highlights since the default curve is adding too much lightness.

Then, switch to "color matrices" tab and set the white balance slider to the left on negative values.

You don't even have to open a DNG file to do this. Believe me. Set the slider to the following values, and export the profile after each value, mentioning it in the name of the profile. -25, -50, -62, -75, -100

Why so much ? because when shooting digital IR you are likely to have different custom white balance from time to time, so you will end up choosing a different profile. The only purpose of the profile is to retain as much detail and information as possible (linear curve, faithful base profile) and shift the zero of the Lightroom slider so when you load the IR RAW file with the given profile, white balance will fall in the middle of the 2000-50000 range. Then you can fine-tune the white balance from there.

Note : the -62 value is the most likely to set your lightroom WB slider in the middle if the custom WB used for the shots has been chosen properly. If it does not, try any of the other profiles.

For very very inadequate custom WB shots, you can re-load the -100 profile as base profile in the DNG profile editor, and then apply even more negative shift (-100 will equal to the new zero). I actually created a -125, -150 and -175 profile just in case so I dont have to open the DNG profile editor too often

I haven't shot IR, but FWIW, Rawtherapee 2.4 seems to have a 1200k to 12000k range.

All Adobe products, AFAIK, have the WB limit. ACR is just as useless as LR. I have tried many applications with IR and about the only one that seems to work is DPP.

xandros posted how to get around the wb limit.

THANK YOU!

xandros wrote in post #8573062
Well its totally untrue, lightroom is wonderful for digital IR since the day Adobe released the DNG Profile editor.

I created 5 custom profiles yesterday, works like a charm !

Here's a link explaining what to do, scroll to section
Tutorial 4: Infrared-Modified Cameras and Unusual Lighting


http://labs.adobe.com …ofiles:Editor#t​utorial_ir


I strongly advise you to just start out with the profile supplied by the camera manufacturer, and choose the "Faithful" one (the more close to zero adjustments). Then on the "tone curve" tab, choose "linear". If you don't, you will lose a lot in the highlights since the default curve is adding too much lightness.

Then, switch to "color matrices" tab and set the white balance slider to the left on negative values.

You don't even have to open a DNG file to do this. Believe me. Set the slider to the following values, and export the profile after each value, mentioning it in the name of the profile. -25, -50, -62, -75, -100

Why so much ? because when shooting digital IR you are likely to have different custom white balance from time to time, so you will end up choosing a different profile. The only purpose of the profile is to retain as much detail and information as possible (linear curve, faithful base profile) and shift the zero of the Lightroom slider so when you load the IR RAW file with the given profile, white balance will fall in the middle of the 2000-50000 range. Then you can fine-tune the white balance from there.

Note : the -62 value is the most likely to set your lightroom WB slider in the middle if the custom WB used for the shots has been chosen properly. If it does not, try any of the other profiles.

For very very inadequate custom WB shots, you can re-load the -100 profile as base profile in the DNG profile editor, and then apply even more negative shift (-100 will equal to the new zero). I actually created a -125, -150 and -175 profile just in case so I dont have to open the DNG profile editor too often