Experiments in B&W

coscorrosa

Per Bryan Bzdula's recommendation, I decided to try out Nik Silver Efex for B&W conversions. I've been playing with it for the last two hours and I'm pretty impressed, it's certainly about 500 times better than the black and white layer mask in Photoshop I had been using before

Here are some re-works of shots I've taken in the last two weeks (most were not shot with a B&W conversion in mind, but I chose them now because I thought they might work in B&W). I've posted some of these on dgrin in their color versions, some of them are new.

Let me know what ones work and which ones don't. I'm still playing around with this thing. Some of the effects aren't subtle, I'm like a teenager making their first web page circa 1996 with blinking text, a ghastly background image, twenty unnecessary frames, scrolling text at the bottom, and a copious amount of under construction signs plastered all over the place (now that I think of it, that's also MySpace circa 2009). Anyway, the point is I'm abusing some features because they're new to me but eventually I'll tone it down (maybe).

#1 Ruby Beach Sunset - I like the contrast in the foreground, I was also able to add some pop to the rock in the foreground.



#2: Rialto Beach Sunrise (I like the gray shades of the rocks in the foreground and the detail of the drift wood)



#3 Second Beach Sunrise, this was a silhouette in color and I think it looks decent in B&W too (but probably not as good as the color version since the colors were pretty great):



#4: Bzdula Beams at Second Beach, my original version of this was also B&W, but with no detail in the main tree because I couldn't get it out, the control points in the plugin make it pretty easy to do local contrast/brightness adjustments.



#5 Same as #4:



#6 Second Beach sunrise, not sure about this one...



#7 "Seattle Lighting" - I actually shot this with B&W in mind two weeks ago.



#8:



#9 Seattle Sunset (took a 30 minute break from work the other day when I noticed interesting clouds). I actually think this one works pretty well. I haven't compared it to the color version because I haven't processed the color version yet.



#10 This is one of the presets in the plugin (with a few minor tweaks later), it's very over the top but I kind of like it anyway.

CWSkopec

Wow... just wow... Great work once again, Ron!

I really like the first, fourth and fifth. (Fourth one has an odd looking arc on the right side though... is that an artifact from the plug-in?)

The second one is good, but I remember seeing it not too long ago in color and I greatly prefer the color version. I think the warmth of the sunlight on the driftwood really sold it to me in color and I'm missing that feeling from the black & white.

I get the same sort of feeling from #3 & #6. They're good photos, but I think need the colors!

All around, amazing job, especially with only 2 hours practice!

bryanj87

Nice job with these. The first two shots and the Seattle shots I think look the best in b/w. The detail in the Rialto shot is really great. You can bump the structure setting and bring out more detail, but you are right it's easy to get out of control. Those Bzdula beam shots look great as well.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is if you have any amount of dust bunnies on your sensor, Nik Silver will generally make it stand out like a sore thumb. I didn't see any on yours, but I've got a few spots on my 40d and wow do they stand out.

Swartzy

Thanks for sharing these Ron. That plug-in is great isn't it? Wow...I love those light beams..fantastic. The city looks awesome converted as well. Beautiful work. thumb

wfeller

Yo. Exceptionally nice work.

Abiciriderback

Cool Ron really like 1,3,5,9 welcome to the Nik gang. I use color Efex Pro 3.0 pluggin and love it. Really like the GND filter.
Couple of other shall we say underrated pluggins that I use that are really nice especially for B&W. May wanna look at ReDynaMix and Topaz Adjust.

Ray Still

bryanj87

Abiciriderback wrote:

Cool Ron really like 1,3,5,9 welcome to the Nik gang. I use color Efex Pro 3.0 pluggin and love it. Really like the GND filter.
Couple of other shall we say underrated pluggins that I use that are really nice especially for B&W. May wanna look at ReDynaMix and Topaz Adjust.

Ray Still

We can't forget to mention Nik Viveza. I use that all the time for color images. like Nik Silver, it features control points that make it super easy to use.

dlplumer

Great set Ron. I like the first and the last the most. That last one is surreal, and almost science fiction-like.

chrismoore

Those are really great. I'm a big fan of nik plug-ins and downloaded a trial version of silver efex but was waiting until my trip to utah next week to try it out. Do you feel it is pretty easy to use?
Vivenza is something that looks nice but I've not given much thought to trying it out until I saw it come up a couple of times in the posts here. what advantages do you feel vivenza gives?
Thanks for the input.
Chris

Awais Yaqub

These are wonderful ! will look great printed huge

NeilL

The first is very nice, Ron!

Neil

Darren Troy C

Great stuff!

Tango

Ron if you can/or willing? i would like to see your before B&W to your newly processed nik B&W 's, specifically #1 & #3.

jeffmeyers

Oh yeah. These are nice. Very nice. I especially like #1, 4, and 7.

I've tried Nik's Efex Silver, too. And I really liked it. Problem is that I use Capture NX2 for almost everything these days and they don't make it for that program.

I do, however, love their Color Efex Pro filters.

Great photographic work!

coscorrosa

CWSkopec wrote:

Wow... just wow... Great work once again, Ron!

I really like the first, fourth and fifth. (Fourth one has an odd looking arc on the right side though... is that an artifact from the plug-in?)

The second one is good, but I remember seeing it not too long ago in color and I greatly prefer the color version. I think the warmth of the sunlight on the driftwood really sold it to me in color and I'm missing that feeling from the black & white.

I get the same sort of feeling from #3 & #6. They're good photos, but I think need the colors!

All around, amazing job, especially with only 2 hours practice!

Thanks! I agree on #6, I don't think it works as great as a B&W. I do like the color version of #3 better too, but I think the B&W version is OK, it definitely gives off a different vibe. The plug-in is pretty intuitive, I watched the tutorial videos for about 20 minutes and that was all the training you need really, the rest is just experimentation.

As for the circle thing on #4, that's some weird lens flare type deal. It's the first time I've ever seen it, but it's definitely there (and it's there on all three exposures I used for the shot). I might remove it, not sure.

coscorrosa

bryanj87 wrote:

Nice job with these. The first two shots and the Seattle shots I think look the best in b/w. The detail in the Rialto shot is really great. You can bump the structure setting and bring out more detail, but you are right it's easy to get out of control. Those Bzdula beam shots look great as well.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is if you have any amount of dust bunnies on your sensor, Nik Silver will generally make it stand out like a sore thumb. I didn't see any on yours, but I've got a few spots on my 40d and wow do they stand out.

Thanks Bryan (for the comments and the recommendation on the filter).

As for the dust spots, I noticed that too. My 5D II shipped with a ton of crap on the sensor, fortunately I had removed it on most of these shots in Photoshop since I had processed them in color. I went and cleaned the sensor and now life is good.

This is what I use to clean my sensor:

http://www.copperhillimages.com/index.php?pr=Copper_Hill_Products

Works very good, I cleaned it before my last trip to Olympic National Park (at 1:30 AM while my battery was charging).

coscorrosa

chrismoore wrote:

Those are really great. I'm a big fan of nik plug-ins and downloaded a trial version of silver efex but was waiting until my trip to utah next week to try it out. Do you feel it is pretty easy to use?
Vivenza is something that looks nice but I've not given much thought to trying it out until I saw it come up a couple of times in the posts here. what advantages do you feel vivenza gives?
Thanks for the input.
Chris

I haven't used that plug-in, I watched the tutorial and it looks very promising (and easy to use like silver efex).

coscorrosa

AaronNelson wrote:

Ron if you can/or willing? i would like to see your before B&W to your newly processed nik B&W 's, specifically #1 & #3.

Actually, #1 and #3 I never processed to B&W before, so I don't have a "before" on them Suffice to say, it wouldn't have been as good (or if it was, it would have taken me a lot longer to process).

coscorrosa

Thanks for the comments everyone, I'll definitely try and put this plug-in to use more often in my day to day shooting. I might be able to rescue a few older shots with it too.

grimace

Awesome job Ron. They are all top notch but I am drawn to the 1st overall shot and the 1st photo of Seattle with the roads.

shniks

Excellent Ron- I am def going to try this out too... Wonderful conversions on already great shots.



Cheers,

travellerbug

Very beautiful shots! I am a sucker for black and white, there is something so interesting in the light and shadow play. These are gorgeous and I look forward to seeing more.

Dwayne Oakes

The tones just rock in photo 3 ! Great job Ron.

Take care,

Dwayne Oakes