Posted by Paul Wegemann on March 20, 2007 at 9:53 AM
Is there any way to avoid posterization and loss of detail when doing
extreme black and white conversions? I really like the dark sky, eye popping cloud effect that can be achieved by using channel mixer and cranking up the red channel while dialing down the blue, but I find the resulting damage to detail to be too much to put up with. Are there any techniques, or even third party products, to deal with this?
Some channels are noisier than others. Generally it helps to apply some noise reduction before the conversion, then selectively identify areas that may look objectionable and apply some amount of blurring to smooth them out (being very careful to mask important detail).
Guy
Posted by Kelly Rowe on March 20, 2007 at 12:20 PM
I've had real good success with Alienskin's Exposure plug-in. It has a bunch of well done filters that mimic specific films in both B&W and Color. Once envoked, you can tweak just about every property imaginable, and see the effects in a side by side preview system. I think it was about $100 US, money well spent since I'm enamoured with B&W portrait printing these days. Now for a RIP...
There's also a nice article in Photoshop Creative issue 18 (probably still on the newsstands) covering many ways of approaching B&W conversion.
Discussion
2 repliesextreme black and white conversions? I really like the dark sky, eye popping cloud effect that can be achieved by using channel mixer and cranking up the red channel while dialing down the blue, but I find the resulting damage to detail to be too much to put up with. Are there any techniques, or even third party products, to deal with this?
Thanks,
Paul
Guy
There's also a nice article in Photoshop Creative issue 18 (probably still on the newsstands) covering many ways of approaching B&W conversion.