b&w conversion for portraits

kapalua

hello,
Does anyone have any favorite channel mixer b&w conversion "recipes" for skin tones? At least as a starting point?

Andy - your tutorial suggested 50/50/0, but it doesn't seem quite right for skin, at least for things like head shots. I like 50/40/10 slightly better as a starting point but I find myself spending way too long fiddling with each slider to get it right and I'm wondering if anyone else has ideas for a general starting point.

Any ideas?
thanks.

flyingdutchie

kapalua wrote:

hello,
Does anyone have any favorite channel mixer b&w conversion "recipes" for skin tones? At least as a starting point?

Andy - your tutorial suggested 50/50/0, but it doesn't seem quite right for skin, at least for things like head shots. I like 50/40/10 slightly better as a starting point but I find myself spending way too long fiddling with each slider to get it right and I'm wondering if anyone else has ideas for a general starting point.

Any ideas?
thanks.

I use mostly Nikon Capture to make simple B&W, therefore i don't know about the exact equivalent values in photoshop.

I like my B&W portraits to be more gritty, more contrast. I seem to get this effect best when i
- set the Red channel quite low (quite a bit less than 50). This increases the contrast, brings out some detail, it seems.
- Increase the Green channel. Decreasing the Red makes the pic too dark. Increasing the Green will lighten it up again. (more than 50)
- If your pic is a little to bright/fuzzy, lower the Blue (less than 50). If your pic is still somewhat darkish, increase the Blue (more than 50). You'll see that changing the Blue channel has the least effect on your pic (relative to changin the other two color channels).

Again, this is what i do in Nikon Capture to get the 'gritty' effect. I don't know how well this translates in Photoshop.

Richard

kapalua wrote:

hello,
Does anyone have any favorite channel mixer b&w conversion "recipes" for skin tones? At least as a starting point?

Andy - your tutorial suggested 50/50/0, but it doesn't seem quite right for skin, at least for things like head shots. I like 50/40/10 slightly better as a starting point but I find myself spending way too long fiddling with each slider to get it right and I'm wondering if anyone else has ideas for a general starting point.

Any ideas?
thanks.

I am not an expert, but FWIW here's what I do to speed the process. I have saved a number of channel mixer combinations (30/60/10, 60/20/20, etc). I look carefully at each channel in the pic separately (using the channels palette) and decide roughly which channels to emphasize, then using channel mixer->load, I load the closest combination and tweak it from there. It is also very fast to load several different channel mixer adjustment layers if you are in doubt, and see which one you like the best. You could create an action to do this automatically, though I have never found that necessary. For skin tones, I usually start at 60 red and have several different combinations of green and blue to choose from based on detail and noise.

Hope this helps.

System

my flavor ofthe month is gorman's bw conversion (found this thru andy's bw tute)-

as you go thru the conversion you have a lot of variability for contrast and even tone-

I've worked on several conversion recipes and for portraits I really like this one-


http://www.greggormanphotography.com/

enter then click on navigation then learn then the pdf-






good luck!
george

System

one thing to remember if you do use the channel mixer-

blue is usually the one with most of the noise-

not that noise is bad, you just ought to be aware-

therefore, you can leave blue out or increase percentage of blue per taste or even clean the blue of noise and use it-

you've opened up a pandora's box when you delve into the world of bw conversion-

again, good luck-
george

USAIR

I really like the ones George has posted and I downloaded the tute/action just havent had a chance to mess with it.
Also check out Virtual Photographer too

And I like using calculations in ps using channels too

Fred

Anthony

gefillmore wrote:

my flavor ofthe month is gorman's bw conversion (found this thru andy's bw tute)-

as you go thru the conversion you have a lot of variability for contrast and even tone-

I've worked on several conversion recipes and for portraits I really like this one-


http://www.greggormanphotography.com/

enter then click on navigation then learn then the pdf-






good luck!
george

The gorman method gets my vote too.

Anthony.

System

"The gorman method gets my vote too.

Anthony."


checked on a seminar gorman is giving every three months at his place in california-

only 4500 buckeroos-

this does not include most meals and hotel and travel-

(I don't know--maybe I could sell my '17 f4 gibson mandolin-then again, maybe not)-



fred mentioned virtual photographer by optikverve-

this is a neat free ps plugin that is very useful if you're trying to salvage a photo (at least, to me)-

george

colourbox

flyingdutchie wrote:

- set the Red channel quite low (quite a bit less than 50). This increases the contrast, brings out some detail, it seems.
- Increase the Green channel. Decreasing the Red makes the pic too dark. Increasing the Green will lighten it up again. (more than 50)

One reason this would work well is because it matches what b&w film photographers do. The way I was taught, if you are taking portraits with b&w film you should put a green filter in front of the lens because boosting green is friendlier to skin tones.