Birkensee in infrared
water lily leaves
In the pictures above, the actual infrared intensity is encoded in the brightness, whereas colours are developed in an aesthetic way.
However, infrared pictures can also be processed using the colours from regular images overlaying them on the infrared brightness, which results in the following images:
Birkensee
water lily leaves on Birkensee
pine trees
the different ways of processing in detail:
The first line shows a normal and an infrared picture. The infrared picture (IR-RAW) obtains its colour because the red pixels are most sensitive to the infrared radiation. The easiest processing is to convert the infrared image into a black and white picture (IR-BW). To get coloured images, one can take the colours (VIS-CL) from the normal image and apply them to the infrared black-and-white picture. This result 1 has natural colours with a brightness derived from the infrared image.
Another way to get coloured infrared pictures (the ones first shown) is to apply white balance on the leaves (IR-WB) and then swapping the red and blue channels of the image (result 2).
bog cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccos)