*ENTRY* Thread DSS#20 (Chaos or Serenity - Exclusive Black & White Challenge)

BobbyMarshall

besides the conversion that comes with lightroom, convert to grayscale and messing with the sliders. the plugins that are for lightroom are called "presets". I would just do a search for them in google using different keywords; like "FREE'

and for photoshop they could be either "plugins" or "actions". You would probably be more likely to find a free action rather than a plugin.

but generally both programs do a OK job themselves.

ALso, Youtube is a great wource for mini tutorials if your more of a visual learner..
click here for a quick search result

Candid Arts

divamum wrote:

TONS of presets and plugins. Loads of 'em - just google "lightroom presets". And loads of them are free. Also, LR has those nice sliders to play with the various colour channels in greyscale - have found it very useful

That's what I've done thus far is just play with the sliders once converted to grayscale. I've been pleased with my results thus far. But have some amazing B&W conversions on here and I believe they were using another program specifically for converting to B&W.

dreamcometrue

I have PS CS3

JAG

I shoot my b/w straight from the camera settings. That way i know I got the lighting just right from the moment I click. I find when I convert something after the fact...there is all this playing around to make sure that its a true nuetral grey verses red or blue tinge to it. I have a nikon D300 that lets me set it to a neutral grey..which I have done for my past 2 entries.

This one will be a fun one as always!!

Candid Arts

JAG wrote:

I shoot my b/w straight from the camera settings. That way i know I got the lighting just right from the moment I click. I find when I convert something after the fact...there is all this playing around to make sure that its a true nuetral grey verses red or blue tinge to it. I have a nikon D300 that lets me set it to a neutral grey..which I have done for my past 2 entries.

This one will be a fun one as always!!

So then you shoot in JPEG? Because in RAW, the file itself will be in color, even though you can still see the in-camera B&W conversion on your LCD. So then you'd still need to convert to B&W in software...unless your shooting JPEG.

Tango

dreamcometrue wrote:

I have PS CS3

oops, i acually dont have any good sugestions for PS... i always use LR....
but i will say this:
ive read many times not to use greyscale conversion. why? i dont know. but i think it has to do with good and bad contrast.

i did do a cs3 B&W conversion once and used the B&W filter option instead of greyscale and it seemed to have many options to select... like none, red filter B&W, yellow filter B&W, etc... i think....

my point is dont just do greyscale because someone whom knows more than me said.:D

pyry

AaronNelson wrote:

oops, i acually dont have any good sugestions for PS...

The Black & White dialog. It's pretty close to the conversion tools in Lightroom.

CWSkopec

AaronNelson wrote:

ive read many times not to use greyscale conversion. why? i dont know. but i think it has to do with good and bad contrast.

I think this is the predominate reason why:
http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1134301

I usually end up using the channel mixer or even the black & white adjustment layers in Photoshop. As long as you don't flatten it, you can always go back and make minor adjustments...

Also, I remember a while back I saw a really cool Photoshop document... let's see... ahhh... here it is...
http://www.diyphotography.net/black-white-cheatsheet-for-photoshop

You can download the psd, then follow the directions to place your own image in the appropriate box. The rest of the boxes update to show you what each conversion method will look like...

Dang... I've given away my edge now...

BillyTom

JAG wrote:

I shoot my b/w straight from the camera settings. That way i know I got the lighting just right from the moment I click. I find when I convert something after the fact...there is all this playing around to make sure that its a true nuetral grey verses red or blue tinge to it....

Isn't this by far the easiest and cleanest way? I was under the impression you get a truer B&W....

DoctorIt

Hey gang, you know there's a whole world of dgrin outside of challenges right? We have a whole forum for "finishing techniques", with countless threads on monochrome conversion.

richtersl

And, you can also use Google to find PS actions that will do conversions for you.

michswiss

This is a challenge I'm excited about, not that the others weren't exciting. What better place in the world to capture Chaos or Serenity other than China Ok, pretty much any Asia country, but I'm in China and that'll work...

BobbyMarshall

richtersl wrote:

And, you can also use Google to find PS actions that will do conversions for you.

But... In one of the stickies in the finishing school section it says why using actions areas not good.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=114917

richtersl

BobbyMarshall wrote:

But... In one of the stickies in the finishing school section it says why using actions areas not good.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=114917

Granted, they don't work 100% of the time if you run them straight through, but they do give you a starting point. And, you can always step through the action and tweak things along the way. I found that playing with an action was much less frustrating than using other conversion methods. But that's me.

samsplace

Hi

Try Creative Photoshop Landscape Techniques by Les Meehan for color to monochrome in PS. Their are other good techniques also in this book.

Gil

300m

Like JAG I also shoot B&W from the camera. I use a D200 and set the mode to B&W. I shoot raw & JPG and get a resulting B&W and raw file. I also use filters so my output can look weird with a straight shot, a red, yellow, green, & blue shots in raw If I go with conversion of the color shot conversion I use CS4 and the tools there or the plugin Nik Silver Effects Pro. 90% of the time it manual as I prefer to tweek the sliders or the hue adjusters.

Trevlan

I have a pretty neat idea for a shot. Now, to brush up on my Messatsu Gō Hadō (Murderous Strong Surge). :-) This is going to be my best SP yet! ;-)

Travis

DoctorIt wrote:

Hey gang, you know there's a whole world of dgrin outside of challenges right? We have a whole forum for "finishing techniques", with countless threads on monochrome conversion.

There's a world outside of Challenges??? Oh geeeezzz like 20 hours a day I spend glued to dgrin now isn't enough.....

davev

The way I like to convert is by using layers and a gradient map.
I have a tute here: LINK

Change this:


Into this:

JAG

Candid Arts wrote:

So then you shoot in JPEG? Because in RAW, the file itself will be in color, even though you can still see the in-camera B&W conversion on your LCD. So then you'd still need to convert to B&W in software...unless your shooting JPEG.

I have done RAW on quite a few shoots and frankly I have not seen what is so hot about RAW. Might be because I feel that I am limited on what I can do with the image since I only have capture NX to work with RAW files, and that program sucks big time as far as I am concerned. It will constantly freeze up on me about 95% of the time. I don't have time for stuff like that. Especially if I want to do any extra work I have to save as jpeg anyway to bring it to psp x2 program.

I was thinking on getting a CS4 when I got my Wacom Intuos3 earlier this week. It came with a version of PS elements 6 and they gave me an offer to upgrade that to CS4 for half the price. So far I am not impressed by the PSE and am wondering if I should save my money and just get Lightroom as I hear it does great with RAW files and skin tones.

Until I get a better program to deal with RAW...I will not shoot anymore RAW. Its a waste of space.

JAG

Very nice conversion Dave!

DoctorIt

Travis wrote:

There's a world outside of Challenges??? Oh geeeezzz like 20 hours a day I spend glued to dgrin now isn't enough.....

You know you can split those hours up, right?



:hide

Tango

JAG wrote:

I have done RAW on quite a few shoots and frankly I have not seen what is so hot about RAW. Might be because I feel that I am limited on what I can do with the image since I only have capture NX to work with RAW files, and that program sucks big time as far as I am concerned. It will constantly freeze up on me about 95% of the time. I don't have time for stuff like that. Especially if I want to do any extra work I have to save as jpeg anyway to bring it to psp x2 program.

I was thinking on getting a CS4 when I got my Wacom Intuos3 earlier this week. It came with a version of PS elements 6 and they gave me an offer to upgrade that to CS4 for half the price. So far I am not impressed by the PSE and am wondering if I should save my money and just get Lightroom as I hear it does great with RAW files and skin tones.

Until I get a better program to deal with RAW...I will not shoot anymore RAW. Its a waste of space.

not to disrepect Doc... but i gotta post on the subject...

IMO...shoot raw...keep what you may return to in the future...be brutal in your digital housecleaning.

there will come a day when you wished you had a specific image in raw....

harddrives are cheap! $114 for 1TB @ B&H...thats insane insane insane

300m

JAG wrote:

I have done RAW on quite a few shoots and frankly I have not seen what is so hot about RAW. Might be because I feel that I am limited on what I can do with the image since I only have capture NX to work with RAW files, and that program sucks big time as far as I am concerned. It will constantly freeze up on me about 95% of the time. I don't have time for stuff like that. Especially if I want to do any extra work I have to save as jpeg anyway to bring it to psp x2 program.

I was thinking on getting a CS4 when I got my Wacom Intuos3 earlier this week. It came with a version of PS elements 6 and they gave me an offer to upgrade that to CS4 for half the price. So far I am not impressed by the PSE and am wondering if I should save my money and just get Lightroom as I hear it does great with RAW files and skin tones.

Until I get a better program to deal with RAW...I will not shoot anymore RAW. Its a waste of space.

JAG, I have to agree with Aron. HD are cheep. I bought two 1 TB drives for my MAC from MAC Mall for less than $200 and you can get a 1TB external at COSTCO for $105 (USB 2, Firewire, eSATA). I have 4TB on this machine for storage. Been shooting RAW now for 2 years. Back my file up to a 300G fw800 drive after shooting and monthly to a DVD. I use both Lightroom, have since ver 1.2, and CS4.
If you are interested, you can get them on trial from Adobe for 30 day no strings for the full versions

davev

I have this in my thread for #20, but I need an official answer to this question.
Emily, Doc, it's up to you.
I have a shot that's made up of two shots. One from my camera, and one from a video from the net.

I know that this will get me DQed, but, what if I take a shot of the screen (of the vid) with my digital camera, and then rework the shot in PS. Is this OK by the rules?

This is what the finished shot should look like.


And this is the part that I need to get from the vid to make this shot.



Is what I'm planning OK, or do I need to scrap this idea?

divamum

Question for the mods....

Although it looked fine on my (uncalibrated) monitor, according to another viewer who is calibrated, my conversion looks like it has a slight sepia tint. However, it was NOT in any way tinted, that's simply (apparently) the way the conversion came out once I'd tinkered with it in LR and PS.

Thus my question: is the image legal for this round as-is, or do I need to do it again? :cry

DoctorIt

Dave, fine in my book.

Mum, we're not going pixel peep your entire image to make sure its monochrome.

Emily has final say on this however, the exclusive black and white thing is her new twist.

divamum

DoctorIt wrote:

Dave, fine in my book.

Mum, we're not going pixel peep your entire image to make sure its monochrome.

Emily has final say on this however, the exclusive black and white thing is her new twist.

Thanks for the fast answer, Doc. In fact, further investigation over the last hour or so revealed that there WAS some toning buried behind the scenes in one of the LR presents I was tinkering with (never even occurred to me to look for it since it read so "true" bw on my monitor). So... back to the drawing board! I'll post another entry once I get this figured out....

Tx!

Greensquared

Dave, personally I'm not fond of swiping bits off the net. Could lead to a whole can of worms and where does the line get drawn etc. Since Doc already approved, however, it's allowed.

Diva, looks like ya don't need me.

davev

Greensquared wrote:

Dave, personally I'm not fond of swiping bits off the net. Could lead to a whole can of worms and where does the line get drawn etc. Since Doc already approved, however, it's allowed.

Diva, looks like ya don't need me.

Close up that can of worms and please remove the shot from the contest.
I don't want to cause a problem for future challenges.

Thanks.