Processing digital infrared

[greymayne]

I've recently had a 550 converted for R72. Notwithstanding a custom white balance, when opened in ACR the resulting RAW images have a distinct pink cast. Jpegs though, are as you would expect.
I'm given to understand that the way round this is to open the RAW image in another application (DPP or Gimp) save as a Tiff(?) and then open it in Photoshop.
This seems to work, but can anyone explain why this is necessary (not least because Tiff is Adobe, methinks) and do I have a better option perhaps?

Thank you.

[S_J_P]

Re: Processing digital infrared

I'm led to believe it's all down to the available range of white balance colour temperatures available, with ACR unable to use the lowest values correctly.

Manual WB setting is limited to a minimum of 2,500K, but custom WB can go lower still (as low of 1,000 if I remember correctly). Canon's DPP software can cope with such low WB settings, but ACR bottoms out at 2,000K, so images are left looking red/pink.

As you state, opening them in DPP and exporting as a 16-bit TIFF and then importing into PS gives a correctly balanced image. Alternatively, process them in DPP.

[greymayne]

Re: Processing digital infrared

Thank you, Steve. Makes sense when put like that.