LR: B&W infrared presets comparison

Written by gantico on October 5, 2008. Posted in Lightroom

After receiving some feedbacks for my Lightroom preset black & white infrared 01, I decided to test it on other shots and to compare it to three other B&W presets from Inside Lightroom. The samples should give some reference for spotting scenarios of use and the result with the various presets applied.

First of all, thanks to all the people who wrote me. Someone didn’t recognize the look as similar to real infrared. He is probably right since I didn’t plan to realistically simulate infrared photography in my first preset. I just tried to reproduce some aspects that I really liked in some infrared pictures, as those skies and water surfaces pretty black. Here you are a sample on flickr (from Loupiote) of what I mean.

There are some great presets which simulate infrared photography with higher fidelity. I really like them, but for some pictures I wanted a different effect, so instead of using or tweaking them I created my Lightroom preset following another path. I got the look that I was looking for, even if I went a bit beyond the original reference of infrared. (Do you think that I should rename my preset in something else?)

Let’s go to the Lightroom presets comparison. In all the following stripes you’ll find a picture plus four presets applied. The first image is always the original shot. The second and the third show the application of two B&W infrared presets from Inside Lightroom. The fourth shows my black & white infrared 01 preset. The last one shows another preset from Inside Lightroom, which simulates red filters.

To summarize what you’ll see in the following stripes:
1) original shot without any preset
2) preset: BW Infrared 1, by Richard Earney (from Inside Lightroom)
3) preset: BW Infrared 2, by Martin Evening (from Inside Lightroom)
4) preset: GA BW Infrared 01, by GAntico (download it here)
5) preset: BW Red Filter, by Black Bird Blue (from Inside Lightroom)

Find the mentioned presets from Inside Lightroom in its section Black and White Presets. Enjoy the comparison and click on the images to zoom.

1 Original pict - 2 BW IR1, R. Earney - 3 BW IR 2, M. Evening - 4 BW IR 01, GAntico - 5 BW Red Filter, B.B. Blue