B. D.'s Tri-X

bdcolen

Here's my reasonably dependable method for producing black and white images that actually look like black and white images. I've turned it into an action:



As you'll see, this says I used an Adobe supplied curve at the end. I believe that's my curve, but...in any case, when you create your own action I'd suggest tinkering with the final curve.

So the drill is -
Image > Channel Mixer > Red 43 - Green 34 - Blue 23
Filter > Sharpen > Unsharpen Mask - 15 - 50 - 0
Curve - you decide.

Here's an example of a conversion. First, a photo of Harvard Stem Cell Institute co-director Doug Melton:

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And the black and white:



Keep in mind that even when you've created this as an action, you can still fool around with the settings.

B. D.
www.bdcolenphoto.net

whiterice

Thanks for sharing BD. I was wondering when we'd get to your B/W technique.

pathfinder

Thank You, B.D.
I will take the liberty of adding this to the links in the sticky at the top of this forum concerning the conversion of digital color images to B&W digital images. A nice rendition of tones for images of people.

You did not add any noise, ( this comment is a gentle attempt at humor..... )

My 35mm Tri-X never looked anywhere near this grain free. Ever.

bdcolen

pathfinder wrote:

Thank You, B.D.
I will take the liberty of adding this to the links in the sticky at the top of this forum concerning the conversion of digital color images to B&W digital images. A nice rendition of tones for images of people.

You did not add any noise, ( this comment is a gentle attempt at humor..... )

My 35mm Tri-X never looked anywhere near this grain free. Ever.

That's quite true - I didn't, and it didn't. On the other hand, as I very often shoot at 800 iso or 1200, I find that the touch of noise I get gives me very 'old school' looking images.

rutt

Before thinking about any B&W conversion technique, it's important to understand what's at stake. I wrote a tutorial about this a few years ago; it's here.

B.D.'s technique is predicated on the idea of trying to recapture the classic look of a particular film. I have an alternative technique which aims to improve on any possible film technique; see this thread. The basic idea is to start with the best channel for faces (almost always green) and use any parts of the red which are darker (good for skies and water) or blue which are lighter (sometimes helps show color contrast lost in the other two channels.) You just can't make a glass filter that works like this, but it's easy to do with lighten, darken layers in phostoshop.

Let's forget about the curves and high radius sharpening. We both do that. If we just take the channel blending, here is B.D.'s(left) conversion technique vs mine (right).



I get a lot more contrast in the face and also in the eyes. In particular, see how my technique recovers detail at the tiip his nose. The reason for this is simple. The red channel is almost always really really bad for flesh:



Look, no contrast in the flesh! Why do we want any of that in our faces? On the other hand, we might like the darker shirt and eyes in the red than the green.

Anyway, it's something to think about. B.D. thinks he gets a more consistent look by sticking to a technique with a fixed mixture from each channel. I think the look I get is recognizable and generally has better flesh contrast than any that includes any of the red channel in faces. Of course, for some purposes, more flesh contrast isn't necessarily good (glamor, flattering portraits of elderly people, &etc.)

So there is no right and wrong here. It's good to have a look that you like, a personal style. I just wanted to discuss the question of whether the limitations of film vs some digital techniques.

Nikolai

bdcolen wrote:

That's quite true - I didn't, and it didn't. On the other hand, as I very often shoot at 800 iso or 1200, I find that the touch of noise I get gives me very 'old school' looking images.

I my own experience is any indication, the digital noise looks quite different from the high-iso film grain even after bw conversion. When I'm after the film grain effect I usually use one of the PS filters...
Besides, on the modern cameras (like 50D or 5D2) iso 800 is still pretty much noise free :-)