Home Photoshop Photo Editing Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect

Author: PhotoshopAtoms More by this author

Added: Oct 13, 2009 Rating:

Level: Beginner Software: Photoshop

We will start with the following photo:

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect image 1

The first thing we will do is to create a new pattern to overlay onto the image to get that scanline look. Open a new document of about 10x10px. Zoom in, create a new layer and delete the background layer so we're working on a transparent canvas. Now draw a 2px black horizontal line at the top. You can hold shift whilst using the Pencil tool to draw straight lines.

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect image 2

Press Ctrl+A to select the entire canvas and then goto Edit > Define Pattern. Give it the name scanlines.

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect image 3

Now go back to our original image, and create a new layer. Fill the new layer with a solid color so that it fills everything. Now look at the top of the Layers window and see the Fill option below the Opacity. Set the Fill to 0%. This will make everything in the layer transparent.

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect image 4

Next, open up the Layer Styles for this new layer and choose color overlay. Set the Blend Mode to Overlay, and choose a Green color. You may also want to reduce the opacity, depending upon your image and the look you want.

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect image 5

Create a new layer and choose the Paint Bucket tool. In the toolbar at the top, change the Drop-Down from Foreground to Pattern, then choose from the Pattern list the one we just created:

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect image 6

Now fill the new layer with this pattern, and we should have black lines like so:

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect image 7

Goto Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and choose a radius of around 1px. Next, change the Blending mode of this layer to Overlay or Soft Light, whichever you prefer. You may also want to reduce the opacity of this layer:

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect image 8

As a finishing touch to the scanlines, open up the layer styles for the scanlines layer and add an Outer Glow, changing the color to White.

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect image 9

The next step is to create another layer and then make an oval selection with the Elliptical Marquee tool, like so:

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect image 10

Then we will goto Select > Modify > Feather, by 7px. Then Select > Inverse, and then fill the new layer with Black (remembering to set the Paint Bucket tool back to foreground instead of pattern):

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect image 11

Now, with the selection still active (if you deselected, just Ctrl-click the layer we're working on), goto Filter > Distort > Wave. We want to uneven the edges, so experiment with the different settings. You can also click the randomize button to get different results using the same settings. This is what I used:

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect image 12

After applying this filter, we should have something like this:

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect image 13

Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Overlay, and then goto Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Choose a value around 10-15%, trying Uniform and Gaussian settings to see which you prefer.

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect image 14

You can duplicate the top layer to create a darker border, and/or you can duplicate the original image layer and add noise to the one on top to make it more authentic-looking. There are so many things to tweak, you can come up with whatever! So please experiment and have fun.

This is what I ended up with:

Creating an Infra-Red Night-Vision Effect Tutorial: Final Result