06 Opacity control points
But that’s what Color Efex Pro’s opacity control points are designed for! Look for the Control Points section under the filter tools and click the ‘-‘ button – and then click on an area of the image you want to protect. This adds a control point which removes the filter effect over that small area.
Don’t be tempted to make the control point radius larger to take in more of the picture, because this is too indiscriminate and will weaken the effect overall. Instead, keep adding ‘-‘ control points at their existing size to all the areas you want to protect. In this screenshot I’ve circled five different control points I’ve added to this picture to protect the brightest highlight areas. The effect is fairly subtle – these areas are still hovering on the edge of complete overexposure – but the control points do recover just a hint of textured detail in these areas, and I think that’s enough.
07 The finished picture
I think that’s worked out pretty well. If I was to do it again, I might experiment with Color Efex Pro’s more authentic colour infrared film looks, or try a couple of different filters to get the blue/monochrome effect other photographers produce, but I’m happy with this for now.
And don’t forget that whenever you come up with filter adjustments or even filter combinations you’re really pleased with, you can save them as a custom Recipe so that you can re-use them in the future on other images with just a single mouseclick.
