Converting to B&W???

Stella Bella

I'm having problems when I convert my color photos to b&w (in PS). I know that there are different ways of doing this and wondered if I could get some advice. Sure, its easy to push the "convert to greyscale" setting, but my pictures are just blah. I try to adjust the contrast, but still not what I'm looking for. TIA.

Kat

mwgrice

Stella Bella wrote:

I'm having problems when I convert my color photos to b&w (in PS). I know that there are different ways of doing this and wondered if I could get some advice. Sure, its easy to push the "convert to greyscale" setting, but my pictures are just blah. I try to adjust the contrast, but still not what I'm looking for. TIA.

Kat

Here's a tutorial one of the resident pros wrote:

http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1126557

Stella Bella

mwgrice wrote:

Here's a tutorial one of the resident pros wrote:

http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1126557

Thanks!! There is so much info here. I love it.

pyrtek

One of the finest B&W conversion methods, to me, is the one proposed by
Greg Gorman. Go to his website (www.greggorman.com) and click the Learn
link. You'll find a PDF there describing his method. It's really exceptional.

Stella Bella

pyrtek wrote:

One of the finest B&W conversion methods, to me, is the one proposed by
Greg Gorman. Go to his website (www.greggorman.com) and click the Learn
link. You'll find a PDF there describing his method. It's really exceptional.

Thank you. I will definitely check it out.

pathfinder

Kat - You need to explore more here on dgrin.:D

Among the links in the Sticky at the top of the Finishing School Forum is a post by Andy, with dozens of links, many of which are directly concerned with B&W conversions - here

The book review and discussion thread about Dan Margulis's Professional Photoshop Fifth Edition is here and much of it relates to B&W conversion.

In particular, my review of Chapter 7 "Keeping the Color in B&W" concerns B&W conversion in greater detail.

If you do a search here on dgrin for "B&W conversion" you will get over a dozen pages of links.:ivar

Why give a person a fish, if you can teach them to fish for themsleves

OffTopic

pyrtek wrote:

One of the finest B&W conversion methods, to me, is the one proposed by
Greg Gorman. Go to his website (www.greggorman.com) and click the Learn
link. You'll find a PDF there describing his method. It's really exceptional.

The link for Greg Gorman is incorrect. It should be www.gormanphotography.com. The link given is for a Florida real estate agent!

arodney

OffTopic wrote:

The link for Greg Gorman is incorrect. It should be www.gormanphotography.com. The link given is for a Florida real estate agent!

Check out his workshops. Awesome. Got a web gallery from the last one (but it is rated R as it is a nude shooting photo workshop).

pathfinder

Somewhere I saw an article about Gorman's studio in California - a full two stories with indoor and outdoor lighting stages, full kitchen and dining area. He has a full staff including make up artists, lighting people, computer and Photoshop crews, quite impressive.

Andy said he had a full time caterer as well.

I would think that his workshops would be excellent if you were well prepared before hand. I might be more than a little imtimidated at this point in my portrait skills.

I see you were a guest speaker for his workshop in August, Andrew.

davev

This is what I do.

http://davev.smugmug.com/gallery/2618305

Aard

I use the BW conversion actions from http://www.1clickactions.com but then wrote my own action to create a contact sheet of some of the options. I then pick the best image from the contact and run the chosen action on my image.
Sometimes its possible to have too many choices.

Mark Segal

As noted above, there are umpteen approaches for converting images to B&W. The two that I like best, for their ease of use, flexibility and quality are:

(1) TheImagingFactory plug-in "Convert to Black and White Pro", which costs some money (NOToutrageous), which I implement on a duplicate image layer allowing me to adjust it independently in many ways, or

(2) Bundled with Photoshop CS3, the new Black and White Adjustment Layer - an excellent algorithm that allows plenty of control and produces fine results.

colourbox

Mark Segal wrote:

(2) Bundled with Photoshop CS3, the new Black and White Adjustment Layer - an excellent algorithm that allows plenty of control and produces fine results.

I was wondering why no one mentioned that earlier. The Black and White adjustment layer in Photoshop CS3 and feature in Lightroom seems to give the best results with the most photographer-friendly UI for hue>tone mapping, and in just one step. All the other methods are good and useful, but compared to Black and White, they all look like the long way around now.

Stella Bella

What about with CS2....is their a similar option?

HarlanBear

colourbox wrote:

I was wondering why no one mentioned that earlier. The Black and White adjustment layer in Photoshop CS3 and feature in Lightroom seems to give the best results with the most photographer-friendly UI for hue>tone mapping, and in just one step. All the other methods are good and useful, but compared to Black and White, they all look like the long way around now.

I agree. I've tried most if not all the methods mentioned above and found this (new) feature to have great results with maximum control of the colors and range of conversion for each. I then add a step I read somewhere: Create a new Adj layer>Selective Color, choose black from the drop-down menu and crank it up. Sometimes just a bit and sometimes quite a lot. This really buries the blacks, if you're trying to do that. Works great.

I don't think it is in CS2, one of the changes to CS3.

colourbox

Stella Bella wrote:

What about with CS2....is their a similar option?

For CS2, all of the other suggestions in this thread are great. They were the best ways to do it...before CS3 came along.