Black and White Conversion Discussion

Andy

Discussion points, questions, recommendations for other approaches.

Black and White Conversion Tute

So, whaddya have to say? :ear

cletus

Andy wrote:

Discussion points, questions, recommendations for other approaches.

Black and White Conversion Tute

So, whaddya have to say?

Beautiful conversion and and excellent write up. Should be very helpful!

wxwax

Excellent how to on curves and levels.

There are so many darned ways to B&W, it's bewildering. I've been playing with the color channel route and liking it.

dandill

Andy wrote:

Discussion points, questions, recommendations for other approaches.

Black and White Conversion Tute

So, whaddya have to say?

I find your tutorial *very* helpful. Here is a go at your scheme. The color original is



and the black & white version is



The layers are



and their details are

Toning: Color, 15%
Blur foreground: Normal, 66%
Contrast: Luminosity, 100%
Red copy: Normal, 72%
Red: Screen, 39%
Green: Overlay: 50%
Blue: Normal 100%

Thanks very much Andy.

Dan

Andy

dandill wrote:

Dan

WTG Dan, that's a gorgeous shot - and very well suited - perfectly suited - for a BW treatment! Well done. Thanks for the details, too!

dandill

Andy wrote:

WTG Dan, that's a gorgeous shot - and very well suited - perfectly suited - for a BW treatment! Well done. Thanks for the details, too!

My son Chris had a look and suggested I could improve things by boosting the contrast between the clouds and the sky. A great feature of Andy's scheme is its allowance for this kind of adjustment.

The before image



becomes



The before (luminosity) curve is



and the after curve is



Thanks Chris!

Andy

Done for a SmugMug customer who's lurking:

From the camera:


Customer's edit:


Following the tutorial:


From the camera (sepia mode)


Customer's edit:


Following the tutorial:


On the second one, I blew out the sky, as it was unimportant IMO, and allowed me to really make a nice contrasty image.

Discuss...

Rohirrim

Andy wrote:

Discussion points, questions, recommendations for other approaches.

Black and White Conversion Tute

So, whaddya have to say?

Excellent tutorial Andy. Very informative.

Another site that has free BW conversion actions is http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/photoshop-tools.htm His site also has a bunch of other tutorials and free actions. His sharpening action set gets a lot of praise.

sunxsweet

let me ask very dumb question... i have a feeling others have wondered this...

what's the difference between doing all this versus just converting the image to grayscale in photoshop? (be gentle)

arodney

So much faster, easier, non destructive in Lightroom....
http://photoshopnews.com/stories/downloads/LRNgrayscale_STD2.mov

Richard

sunxsweet wrote:

let me ask very dumb question... i have a feeling others have wondered this...

what's the difference between doing all this versus just converting the image to grayscale in photoshop? (be gentle)

The short answer is that when you lose color, you lose one of the major ways we perceive details in an image. You may need to adjust the color so as not to lose the information that it contains. Here's an artificial example of what can happen:

This image includes two colors that are clearly distinguishable by hue but have the same brightness. You couldn't miss the difference unless you were color blind.



The following is a straight conversion of the above image to gray scale:



Where did the inner rectangle go? It vanished because there was no difference in luminance between the the two colors.

Admittedly, this is an artificial example, but it should persuade you that simply converting to gray scale can lose information.

OK, end of lesson. For a longer answer, review the tutorial that was mentioned above. There are also many threads discussing B&W conversion that you can find by using the search dropdown box on the main Dgrin navigation bar.

Regards,

sunxsweet

awesome!!! that's exactly the simple answer i was looking for. i've read all the tutes on b&w conversion. but your example made it very obvious. clap

Tango

arodney wrote:

So much faster, easier, non destructive in Lightroom....
http://photoshopnews.com/stories/downloads/LRNgrayscale_STD2.mov

thanks arodney..very helpful to me.

RomeBoy

I use the LR approaching of working with the greyscale color tones as mentioned by Andrew. The results are very effective and so easy to tune by eye. More and more I find I do most things in LR and really only go into PS to run NoiseNinja on obscenely high ISO shots with terrible noise (e.g. 6400) and to soft proof. If/when Adobe add soft proofing to LR, PS will really fade to the corner case use in my workflow. Contrary to advice I've seen from Dan Margulis, I find I do as much as possible in the raw converter (LR) before I bring any image into PS. So, given the image example in the top post, I would probably create the ideal overall BW in LR (to my eye), then only bring it into PS for the localized edits in the teeth and eyes.

arodney

RomeBoy wrote:

I use the LR approaching of working with the greyscale color tones as mentioned by Andrew. Contrary to advice I've seen from Dan Margulis, I find I do as much as possible in the raw converter (LR)

You ain't seen anything yet!

Let's talk tomorrow <g> .......

Tango

dont forget to include me it that conversation

dandill

arodney wrote:

You ain't seen anything yet!

Let's talk tomorrow <g> .......

The reminds me of a comment by Jeff Schewe a day or two ago on one of the Adobe forums. Something like: "Do you know what are you doing April 2? I do..."

RomeBoy

arodney wrote:

You ain't seen anything yet!

Let's talk tomorrow <g> .......

Ahhhh. LR 2 beta. This is what your cryptic comments signified, no? I very much look forward to any discourse you offer on the new functionality. I just posted my initial observations on another thread. I don't see any soft proofing, though. Am I missing it or is it missing in this release.

arodney

RomeBoy wrote:

Ahhhh. LR 2 beta. This is what your cryptic comments signified, no? I very much look forward to any discourse you offer on the new functionality. I just posted my initial observations on another thread. I don't see any soft proofing, though. Am I missing it or is it missing in this release.

Yup! I'm at Photoshop World so it's kind of busy until end of week (two more seminars to teach). But download and play (don't build a library of anything you might not be able to go back to in an older build). Big deal is selective painting now, output sharpening, output to JPEG in Print module, print package in Print module, new browser for finding images, smart collections. NO soft proofing! I'm bumbled. But I'll live.

Ozone

I was wondering if this topic was about B&W conversion for a finished product or just in general. If general B&W conversion, how about a simple conversion of a copy of the original image into LAB color space and using the L channel? This is a quick and dirty method, but the conversion is still 16 bit (PS makes them 15 bit for math purposes ). I find that it usually gives me a good B&W from which to work. It is also good for tuning up an image that is going to be used as a layer mask, as opposed to Desaturate.

Is there an advantage to using channel combination, such as use on individual layers?

Richard

Ozone wrote:

Is there an advantage to using channel combination, such as use on individual layers?

This is image specific. The L channel tends to be lighter than you probably want. Sometimes it can be fine with just a curves adjustment on top. On the other hand, in my post above, the L channel of the color image is exactly the gray scale image (I built the whole example in LAB), so you can see that in some cases, you will lose information.

arodney

Richard wrote:

This is image specific. The L channel tends to be lighter than you probably want. Sometimes it can be fine with just a curves adjustment on top. On the other hand, in my post above, the L channel of the color image is exactly the gray scale image (I built the whole example in LAB), so you can see that in some cases, you will lose information.

Exactly! The Lab trick is nothing special, it does nothing to provide the tonal separation (nor control) we need to render differences from the color data. Its luminance data, nothing more. The relationship between colors to tones is really something best done when you have an actual color image and can alter the relationship from that color. So, using (copy and pasting) the RG and B color channels into one doc and painting away the areas you wish is one technique to do this. But its pretty laborious. Another is using something like a selective color to gray (tone) adjustment using the HSL sliders in Lightroom (from what IS a color image). I'd agree that the L channel trick is often better than the simple Mode Change>Grayscale option in Photoshop, but not a whole lot more. At least with Channel mixer, you're given the options of blending the channels to build a tone relationship. Not so with this Lab technique.

Tango

:lurk

im just over hear in the corner.:D

arodney, do happen to have anymore tute links like the one you shared earlier?

arodney

AaronNelson wrote:

:lurk
arodney, do happen to have anymore tute links like the one you shared earlier?

tute links?

DigitizeMe

NoiseNinja question
I am dealing with some very grainy photos taken at a wedding brightest time of the day! I only have PS7, tell me more about the NoiseNinja??? thanks

RomeBoy wrote:

I use the LR approaching of working with the greyscale color tones as mentioned by Andrew. The results are very effective and so easy to tune by eye. More and more I find I do most things in LR and really only go into PS to run NoiseNinja on obscenely high ISO shots with terrible noise (e.g. 6400) and to soft proof. If/when Adobe add soft proofing to LR, PS will really fade to the corner case use in my workflow. Contrary to advice I've seen from Dan Margulis, I find I do as much as possible in the raw converter (LR) before I bring any image into PS. So, given the image example in the top post, I would probably create the ideal overall BW in LR (to my eye), then only bring it into PS for the localized edits in the teeth and eyes.

pathfinder

There a several major programs for de-noising images -- Neat Image, Noise Ninja, and NoiseWare among many others. Others are DeFine, DeNoise, and Topaz DeNoise.

These programs have been discussed here on dgrin numerous times. I have used the first three over the years, but I currently use NoiseWare on an adjustment layer in Photoshop. I use CS4, but you could do it in PS7 just fine.

A discussion of NoiseWare can be found here and here Note that Duffy Pratt and Andrew Rodney both use NoiseWare as well.

Was the noise in your original images, or after conversion to B&W? An easy way to diminish noise in B&W sometimes, is to raise the black point a bit....

rutt

DigitizeMe wrote:

I am dealing with some very grainy photos taken at a wedding brightest time of the day! I only have PS7, tell me more about the NoiseNinja??? thanks

Examples are always great. In this case before-after conversion would be most helpful. Without examples, we can only speculate.