Damien Symonds

Yes, the D&B requires a heck of a lot of patience.

Isn't blue the colour of the lace? I know you said it was going to be black-and-white, and in that case you wouldn't need the colour layer, of course, but I wanted to show you how to handle it if you wanted to keep it in colour, just in case.

Ok, let me know how you go.

Gosh, that's such a good question. Generally I'd advise doing it early in the workflow, after pixel editing but before your Levels work. However, technically speaking, you could do it any time. If you forgot to do it early, and had to do it after Levels, that would be ok too.

I'm going to shut down shortly. If you like the edit, here is the file. You said there were other photos - I'm afraid I can't promise this approach will work for all of them. For example, if she's wearing another colour.

This is the best I can manage: Would it suffice?

Yeah, that does help a little.

Gosh, this is never easy. Did you take this crop from the SOOR, or have you done some Photoshop work to the photo?

Ok, first, can you do this for me? http://www.damiensymonds.net/2013/10/how-to-properly-re-install-spyder.html

No, really, which one? Which Spyder do you have, and what screen?

Such as, hypothetically, the one with the umbrellas ...

Nobody would ever do this, of course, but let's say ... hypothetically ... if you were to google "rich blue sky photos", then open some of them into Photoshop, and check the red channel as I described earlier, you'd (hypothetically) see what I mean. Hypothetically ....

Hell no, not a red filter!!!!!!! And hell no, never put your camera in monochrome mode. I just checked with Lara, and she said yes, it's a polarising filter you need. She said it works best in the middle of the day, when the sun is highest. It's not about "trying". I can do this, very easily, once you give me the right photo.

When you're browsing your photos, and you find one with a sky that you think might work (a really rich blue one), open it in Photoshop and go to your Channels panel. Click on the Red channel to see how it looks. You'll quickly know if it's a good candidate for IR.

Well, with some fiddling you could make something a bit IR-ish, but it's nowhere near as good as really nailing that blue sky. I'm out of my depth here, but isn't there a filter you can put on your lens for that sky? A polarising filter, maybe?

Now, can you tell me, on this page, which instructions you're following?

Posting in the wrong section, for starters. I'm going to move this post to the Calibration section.

The trick to this - in digital as in "real" IR - is to find seriously blue skies to photograph. We need that strong red channel component of a rich cyan/blue sky. The photo you've provided doesn't have that blue we need. What else have you got?

You must have taken some outdoor photos in your entire life??

Hi Tina, please help me help you by giving me everything I need.

Please, Mariann, don't do a speck of editing until you've finished the class.

Because you forgot the tiny but very important step in my tutorial about clicking on the layer icon, not the mask thumbnail, in the layers panel.

Nor will you, until you use them.

If this is genuinely the only shot you have of this pose, you could just get away with it. But I urge you to look for a better one. Without the motion blur. I know it's only a tiny bit, but motion blur is a b*tch. Unlike focal plane blur, sharpening will make it worse, not better.

Thanks Kathy!