Another first attempt at B&W conversion

Moryachka

Hello everybody! I've been playing around with cameras for years, first film and now digital, but I've only recently started learning to process images myself. Here is my first serious attempt at B&W conversion; I've been picking it apart for days, consulting books, the internet, and this forum, trying to get it right. I think I've hit a wall. If anyone could offer criticism, hints, etc, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Here is the original photo:



And here is my latest version:




I just can't seem to figure out how to keep the wall from being completely washed out in the middle there without making the rest of the picture too dark. I tried merging two exposures of the color original, one adjusted for the walls and one adjusted for the darker lower half, then converting to B&W, but wasn't pleased with the results. It didn't have enough contrast, even after more tweaking, but then again, my photoshop "skills" are wanting improvement. Thanks in advance!

Angelo

I think you may be overthinking things a bit because I see a pretty darn good image and conversion.

claudermilk

Looks pretty close to me. I'd take another stab at merging two conversions & only bring the wall part down far enough to bring back texture in that highlight area. Subtlety is the key here; it only needs to be adjusted a little bit.

Richard

There is plenty of detail in the bright part of the wall in the original, so you just need to figure out where you are losing it when you do the conversion. If you can't control it with channel blending and curves, then you might try using shadow/highlight to reduce the glare of the brightest parts.

Regards,

TylerW

If you're pretty comfy using both curves and adjustment layers in photoshop, try this out. Open your image and create an HSB adjustment layer, and set your saturation to zero. This will make it so you can see the black and white output, even though you're still editing a color image.

next, go back to your color image, and go to image > adjust > curves. Hit the pulldown at the top so you can adjust the curves for your RGB values individually. This should let you adjust the tones in the grass (which are prediminantly green) without having too great of an effect on the wall behind.

But I don't know that all that is necessary. Its a good looking image with plenty of detail.

ziggy53

I hope you don't mind, here is my attempt:

ziggy53

Atrucker

I think it converts rather easily. This just took a minute or so. I sharpened it a bit then used CS3 beta for the conversion. Added just a touch of contrast too.

claudermilk

Atrucker wrote:

I think it converts rather easily. This just took a minute or so. I sharpened it a bit then used CS3 beta for the conversion. Added just a touch of contrast too.

My favorite so far. The warm tone helps a LOT. This is a good example of why a B&W conversion shouldn't just be desaturate 100%.

Moryachka

Thank you all so much for your help! Sorry for my tardy reply. I will test out your advice and let you know how it goes.

Carbon Based

Moryachka wrote:

Thank you all so much for your help! Sorry for my tardy reply. I will test out your advice and let you know how it goes.

Another thing you might want to try, create an adjustment layer (levels/curves your chioce) adjust it to get the desired effect in the area of concern then "paint back" the other areas with a VERY soft brush whilst playing with opacity. I use this quite a bit for B&W conversions with tricky parts.

dlphotography

I think it looks pretty good already

com3

i think it looks pretty darned good, myself... but i went ahead and did a 30 second com3 hax anyways just for giggles.. (i really like HARSH contrast in BW shots, personally)

CarnalSigh

Com3 I also like that harshness in certain types of B&W, but in this one you are losing some details.
Here's my go at it. Cropped it and removed those light blue posts as well.

Mikko

I hope you don't mind, I took a shot at it.

This is roughly what I did.

What I did was a very basic conversion. Then I dodged the shadows on the windows and in the for ground (dodge shadow 1%). I burned the areas I felt were going to be over exposed to preserve the detail (dodge highlight 1%). Dodged the grass and box thing to bring out highlight detail (dodge highlight 1%). Next I made levels adjustments to bring out a pop. I brought the histogram to the edges and adjusted the midtone slide a bit to darken the mid tones. Last but not least went back throught and adjusted areas with the burn and dodge tool. The idea was to preserve all detail in the highlight and shadows.

Any questions, let me know.

Mikko