B&W conversion of a street shot

mutineer · November 26, 2006

I took this last Memorial day

Rode the motorcycle downtown to take some shot of the monuments and wound up shooting some street pics

I am up at a ridiculous hour trying to learn my way around Elements 4.0 and I converted this to B&W and added some grain and cropped it.

I find the chain to be a pretty big distraction but am not sure what, if anything I can do about it

That day was my first attempt at street stuff

the gallery with all of the pictures from that day is here

here is the original shot

illuminati919 · November 26, 2006

I'm not liking the chain thats hanging behind his head. Also try to boost the contrast a little, it will get rid of the flat look of it. Try cropping a little higher as well.

I like his expression, the photo has definite potential.

Bodwick · November 26, 2006

I'd use the burn tool after masking the background to bring out the character. Also burn the background down.

Sharpen him at maybe 30-40 amount and radius 10-15 then flatten it and maybe sharpen at 2 & 10. A touch of curves as needed.

I mask using EZmask to split background/foreground which works well.

I had a quick go and the character comes out nicely.

(edit) I convert to B&W via image adjustments channel mixer. Monochrome green 100 red 0 blue 0.

mutineer · November 26, 2006

Bodwick wrote:

I'd use the burn tool after masking the background to bring out the character. Also burn the background down.

Sharpen him at maybe 30-40 amount and radius 10-15 then flatten it and maybe sharpen at 2 & 10. A touch of curves as needed.

I mask using EZmask to split background/foreground which works well.

I had a quick go and the character comes out nicely.

(edit) I convert to B&W via image adjustments channel mixer. Monochrome green 100 red 0 blue 0.

you are about a full generation of skill ahead of me

I don't think I can do a radius or direct adjustment of curves in Elements, but I am learning so I could be out to lunch on this one

I cloned out the the chain and changed the contrast and played with the RGB levels in retrograde again, but not much

here is v2

except for getting rid of the chain I am not sure I am happy with this one

illuminati919 · November 26, 2006

^^^ that one is alot better, the background is a tad bit overexposed though.

arroyoshark · November 26, 2006

Mutt, take a look at some of the tutorials at www.digital-monochrome.com. That fellow, Martin, who runs this site (and is on this site) has some good advice on black and white conversions and adjustments. Most of what he has would work in Elements. Martin seldom mentions curve adjustments. Mostly he makes levels adjustments to selected areas. Once you learn how to use a layer mask you will improve dramatically. Just sort of "cookbook" his workflow and you will start to get the hang of it.

Instead of using the adjustments in the pulldown menus, use adjustment layers in the layers pallet, on the right side of elements workspace area.

The way you had cropped the image, my eye wasn't all that bothered by the chain in the background. Might add to the grittiness of a finished image. buenas suerte!

SloYerRoll · November 30, 2006

arroyoshark wrote:

Instead of using the adjustments in the pulldown menus, use adjustment layers in the layers pallet, on the right side of elements workspace area.

This is great advise called "Non Destructive Editing" once you get into this type of image manipulation as well. It opens up worlds of looks due to layer modes and how they interact w/ other layers.
I haven't used it in elements, I'm sure it is very simular to Photoshop though.

DavidTO · November 30, 2006

A) I moved this thread from the Whipping Post to Finishing School, where it belongs.

I haven't done a full conversion here, but I did two things that you could easily do in Elements, and one I'm not sure you can. But you should be able to get close to this.

Here's the steps:

1) Make a black point. The linked tute is for PS, but you should be able to do something similar in Elements.

2) Make sure that the steepest (most contrasty) part of the image is in his face. The basic idea in these first two steps is to optimize the image before doing the conversion. Don't worry about color, just get the contrast bumped up and make sure you've got a good black point.

3) This is 100% the red channel. There was little of any use in the other channels.

It needs more work, but it's a good start, I think.

saurora · November 30, 2006

It's unfortunate the chain is going right through his head. The chain seems to have an unspoken message that adds to his misery. Strangely, without the chain the shot does not look as interesting, but it bugs me going through his head! No solution, just thinking out loud...

arroyoshark · December 1, 2006

saurora wrote:

It's unfortunate the chain is going right through his head. The chain seems to have an unspoken message that adds to his misery. Strangely, without the chain the shot does not look as interesting, but it bugs me going through his head! No solution, just thinking out loud...

Could make a selection of the chain and move it down some, replace with background where it originally was.

JGD · December 1, 2006

That chain is the kind of thing you need to train yourself to see in the viewfinder. Could have been a better shot with a change in shooting position. Also, read the instructions for the whipping post, Your reworked pic belongs in a different thread. Here we should be looking at the original and commenting on it.

I would like to know if you got a model release for this shot? Or if not, is there a reason why that one is not needed. I worry about this all the time and don't have a clear understanding of this issue. I have read that if the person is recognizable, then you need a signed release to publish. I would consider posting on Dgrin as publishing. Any comments?

Jim

DavidTO · December 1, 2006

JGD wrote:

That chain is the kind of thing you need to train yourself to see in the viewfinder. Could have been a better shot with a change in shooting position. Also, read the instructions for the whipping post, Your reworked pic belongs in a different thread. Here we should be looking at the original and commenting on it.

I would like to know if you got a model release for this shot? Or if not, is there a reason why that one is not needed. I worry about this all the time and don't have a clear understanding of this issue. I have read that if the person is recognizable, then you need a signed release to publish. I would consider posting on Dgrin as publishing. Any comments?

Jim

This thread had already been moved from the Whipping Post, thanks for pointing it out! I appreciate the extra set of eyes.

rutt · December 1, 2006

Well this was a good challenge. Let's see...

David's right about the red channel in that we want the beard to be darker than the face and the red channel definitely has that. Also it has better detail in the pyramid thing and in the green vegetation. But it has no detail in his face, plugs the label of the cup and blows the redish parts of the vegetation.

So, we'd like to use the basic dark/light plan of the red channel for his face, but capture some face detail from the green channel for the face. We'd also like to hold some detail in the red greenery and cup label which the pure red channel would otherwise blow and plug respectively.

Also we'd like good detail in the pants which it would be easy to plug in the name of better contrast in his face.

All in all a pretty tall order it turned out.

Really I did four things to get this:

Start with the red channel as the base. I made a layer that was just the red channel.
Add some of the detail from the green channel. I sharpened the green channel, steepened it somewhat, and blended it into the red channel at 25% darken mode.
Recover some detail in those pants. I could have used highlight/shadow to do this, but that's not quite what I did. But let's just say I used highlight/shadow.
Curves to get more contrast in his face.

Fine. I'm sure this isn't the best B&W possible for this image, but I think I achieved my goals and the result is more than competitive with the other attempts so far.

But wait! There's more! Now that I had a B&W that I liked, I thought I'd see whether that contrast would work to make a good color image.

I layerd the B&W over the original image in luminosity mode. Looked pretty good actually, but the colors his face measured too magenta vs yellow and the colors were washed out anyway. I know what to do about both of these problems.

Blend a little bit (25% in this case) of the red into the green in lighten mode to fix the color balance.
With the color balance fixed, I could increase saturation. I did this with an A/B overlay in LAB at 75%. I think increasing the saturation in RGB would have accomplished almost the same thing.

As it turns out, I like my color version best of all the versions by far. Color solves so many problems here. It greatly adds to the contrast between face and beard. It restores detail in the pants. It heightens the impact of the sores on his face.

Moral:B&W conversion can be the first step on the way to a great color image, which might surprise you.

rutt · December 2, 2006

Turns out this shot and what I did with are just what I need to complete my DIY Academy assignment. Please let me know if it's OK or not to use it. I'll be sure to credit you. Thanks.

rutt · December 3, 2006

As it turns out, I ended up using my own shot for my DIY homework. Stay tuned. After a round of proofreading, it will go live and I'll link here.

Bodwick · December 3, 2006

rutt wrote:

All in all a pretty tall order it turned out.

But good fun...

I had a quick look again and came up with this from the colour.

And this from the crop.

I like your shot hope you don't mind me messing about with it.

Bod.

mutineer · December 3, 2006

rutt wrote:

Turns out this shot and what I did with are just what I need to complete my DIY Academy assignment. Please let me know if it's OK or not to use it. I'll be sure to credit you. Thanks.

sure go ahead

I am using this shot to work on my editing learning curve, so this is a great chance to pay it forward

seeing what others would do with the shot is very helpful to me

I liked the chain int he background from a philosophical POV, but not sure if it works in the shot

I did ask if it was OK to shoot after I took a couple of pics but those were less than useful

I am very new to street work but I like it very much, but it seems to take a lot of luck to get great shots

I think good editing skills will take the good shots and hopefully move them towards great

but I clearly have a lot to learn

B&W conversion of a street shot

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