b&w conv - doing it better

danman · November 1, 2004

I have been using various ways to convert from colour to b&w, mainly using the channel mixer method. Here are some of my pics. I would be really grateful if anyone more clever than me can give critique or even create their own interpretation of one of them. I'd love to understand how some of the great effects I've seen on here & FM are done, so I can improve my results.

Here is a colour original of one of those below:
http://dannytucker.smugmug.com/gallery/270719

Thanks,
Danny
UK

PS. EOS 20d, Sigma 18-50 f.28. Available light. Channel mixer, curves & duotone applied.

digismile · November 1, 2004

Hey Dan,

Channel Mixing is certainly one of the most common B/W conversion methods. Can you tell us what mix you used?

Brad

danman · November 1, 2004

Ah, just realised that I flattened the layers before converting to greyscale/8bit for the duotone and have lost that info. Sorry...probably limits what advice I can get I s'pose. What a fool!

digismile wrote:

Hey Dan,

Channel Mixing is certainly one of the most common B/W conversion methods. Can you tell us what mix you used?

Brad

ginger_55 · November 1, 2004

Most of these people are also using selective colors and bumping the black a tad for extra effect.

However I don't get the rich colors some of them are getting using that method either. Flattening or not.

Now with your subject matter, well, that is fascinating, doesn't need extra, smile.

Just thought I would add that about selective colors and the black, in case you see this thread.

Also anyone who can add as to why their blacks appear more velvety than mine, well, any info in the field of photography is welcome.

ginger

miketaylor01 · November 1, 2004

Heres my basic method..
First of all I would have to say that the best way to do this would be to shoot in raw and do the conversion to the raw image. If you are shooting in raw there are alot of things that I do to my images prior to PS. If you are just working with JPG's though this method might get you close to something you like. If you like what I did here then giev it a try and see what you can come up with. This is very simple to do and depending on the original image can yield some good results. Basically this is my compilation of some of the other methods that I have learned on dgrin and have tweaked for my B&W preferences.

First I converted the image to grayscale. The adjusted the birghtness and contrast. I upped the brightness a tiny bit and increased the contrast about halfway up the slider. Next I adjusted the levels. Just tweaked the low end slider to get the best contrast and balance between the brightest and darkest portions of the image. Next I duplicated the background layer and vivid light. I then used the noise filter to add gaussian noise at around 3.5%. I set the opacity of this layer to 15%. this will vary from image to image and I will decide whether to use vivid or hard light depending on the original image and what looks best.

And there you go. Takes about minutes. This works very well for me when just workign with JPG's but I truly prefer to do the converstion directly to the RAW file and make minor level adjustments with PS.

Real quick. Another thing you may like to check out that I love for B&W is to use a program called neatimage. Its mainly used to get rid of nois in an image, but I have found that it creates a cool effect in the image if you shoot at a higher ISO to induce a little noise into the image and then use neatimage on it during post. Check out the thread I started in the other cool shots section called was in a B&W mood today. I did most of what I stated above to these images. Hope this helps.

danman · November 1, 2004

Thanks
Ginger & Mike,

Thanks for your comments. I am shooting in RAW (and what a dream it is with the 20d compared to my old f828 which had 5-10sec write times per frame!). Thanks for the tip re gaussian noise layer - I'll have a play with that.

In terms of doing the conversion with RAW, I have been editing the RAWs using the PS RAW editor, but then doing the conversion to b&w once loaded, which I guess is a bit backwards, as I'm optimising a colour image in RAW then converting to b&w, then re-optimising it using PS again. If you know what I mean

I can see that desaturating it using the RAW editor will involve fewer steps. I was under the impression that purely desat'ing to get to b&w is not ideal, but it certainly seemed to work with your image, which looks great.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.
Danny

tmlphoto · November 1, 2004

Here is my version. It's difficult to get a contrasty image because the womens faces/eyes are the darkest part and there are alot of mid tones.
I used the channell mixer. One trick I've stumbled upon is to use the channels pallete to pick each channel individually and see what each brings to the image. I use this info to pick a starting point. With this image I felt the green and blue channels had the most to offer. The red channel was blownout on the highlights. The mix: Red-0, Green-52, Blue-64. Selective color didn't help. (just made the faces darker) I used the levels to pull the blacks down a little and used curves to try and bring up the mid shadows a little. I spot dodged the women on the left sides eye. I also ran through noise ninja (the original looked a little noisy) and sharpened a tad. Hope this helps.

photocat · November 1, 2004

Black and white...
I think it is Scott Kelby who says that if you use channel mixer, you have to have a total of 100. If you take 20 off the red, then you have to divide the 20 over the blue and green.
I find that if I take out too much red, that I regret it.
Your original pics are not black and white, they have brown in them.
Unless my screen is fooling me.
You also have to chip on the monochrome button on the dialogue page, often I add a noise filter in photoshop, so it becomes more grainy...
Depends on what you like...

tmlphoto · November 1, 2004

Here is a sepia tone version. For this one I just ran it through a PS action from www.jakerlund.net It is a free download.

wxwax · November 1, 2004

tml, both of your versions look great. Nice work!

ginger_55 · November 1, 2004

Thomas, what do you mean re using the channel pallete to see what each has to offer?

Where do you do it?

How do you do it?

How do you analyze what you get.

Maybe you could just answer this as it applied to those pictures. I use channel mixer, but it is just trial and error.

ginger

tmlphoto · November 2, 2004

ginger_55 wrote:

Thomas, what do you mean re using the channel pallete to see what each has to offer?

Where do you do it?

How do you do it?

How do you analyze what you get.

Maybe you could just answer this as it applied to those pictures. I use channel mixer, but it is just trial and error.

ginger

When an image is open there is a box with three tabs "Layers, Channels, Paths". Just click on the Channels tab and there will be a listing of the channels (RGB, Red, Green, Blue). If you click on the little eyeball beside the channel it will alternately select or deselect the channel. What I do is deselect all of the channels except one (red, green or blue). The image displayed is only that channel. This is a greyscale image, and shows what each channel has to "bring to the image" Make sure only one eyeball is showing or you will get a wierd looking filtered color image. The different channels are supposed to be good at different things. Green, I believe is supposed to be good for skin tones, etc. A usual starting point is about 50%red, 50% green and 5% blue, but many images look much better with quite different settings. Also, one channel may have blown hightlights , while the other are ok. Hope this helps. Sorry, for the delated answer. My son had his tonsils out yesterday and we had to spend the night in the hospital.

ginger_55 · November 2, 2004

tmlphoto wrote:

Sorry, for the delated answer. My son had his tonsils out yesterday and we had to spend the night in the hospital.

Oh, that is fine re the delay, will add it to the other info.

I hope your son is better today. Do they still get ice cream. With four kids, I never had a tonsil removed. Don't know why.

Hope you feel OK, and get some rest, needed, I am sure.

ginger

danman · November 3, 2004

Thanks
Thanks a lot for the advice and for taking the time to redo one of my pics. Will try some more adventurous techniques!

Cheers,
Danny

b&w conv - doing it better

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