Sepia and B&W Conversions?????

ShannonHeat

I am no good at this color conversion stuff! What am I doing wrong?

SitterS

Shannon I think the tone on the first pic looks a little red or at least on my computer. I don't do sepia toning on any of my pics so hopefully someone else will reply to this with some good tips.

As far as the BW conversion, it is hard to say what you are doing wrong without knowing how you are converting to BW. Could you possibly share with us the steps you took. The BWs look a little flat. Tones could be enhanced many ways using various tools such as curves and levels, brightness/contrast, etc. I use masks alot in my conversions as each step I do may darken an area too much or blow out the whites so I add a mask to paint back those areas. BWs can be frustrating and challenging.

Shane

ShannonHeat

Wow....who knew it would be so difficult! This is pretty much my first go at converting to b&w and such, so I'm sure I'm doing it all wrong by simply desaturating
I've seen some that you have done, and they are fabulouse! How do you do it?

SitterS wrote:

Shannon I think the tone on the first pic looks a little red or at least on my computer. I don't do sepia toning on any of my pics so hopefully someone else will reply to this with some good tips.

As far as the BW conversion, it is hard to say what you are doing wrong without knowing how you are converting to BW. Could you possibly share with us the steps you took. The BWs look a little flat. Tones could be enhanced many ways using various tools such as curves and levels, brightness/contrast, etc. I use masks alot in my conversions as each step I do may darken an area too much or blow out the whites so I add a mask to paint back those areas. BWs can be frustrating and challenging.

Shane

SitterS

Thank you for the compliment and don't give up. I was looking back at some of my first BWconversions the other day and they were awful. Dull and flat and I thought at the time they were awesome!!!! I use the internet alot to research different ways to do things in photoshop and also the libray is a good resource for books on photography and photoshop. Not sure what version of photoshop you have but here is something to try.

http://raymondshay.com/tutorials/ColorToBW/index.htm

If you want my steps to the BW conversion I use you can find it here:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=57194

If you can run actions you can find some good free stuff here on BW:

www.atncentral.com

Many use the channel mixer for BWs. I would do a search on google for "BW conversions using channel mixer" and see what you can come up with.

Good luck and hope this helps.

Shane