Posted by Les Barstow on January 18, 2008 at 6:38 PM
I guess when you're up editing pictures at 4:00 in the morning, you sometimes get "creative". I decided to experiment in ACR with this image taken in Arches of a Juniper and Queen Nefertiti. This is only my second B&W conversion - let me know what you think. (The first was a near-monochrome shot of snow-blown peaks at RMNP; this image gave me a lot more to work with...)
Posted by Nat Coalson on January 18, 2008 at 9:29 PM
Les - nice composition! I like the overall mood of this and I can clearly see your intentions.
A suggestion - the midtone contrast is flat and could use some work. It looks like you have the black point and white points about right, but everything in between is really low contrast.
I'm interested to know about your method of b/w conversion.
If you're using Lightroom, you can try a few different methods using Virtual Copies.
1. Try a straight "grayscale" (but still really rgb) conversion letting LR auto-adjust. When using this method, try tweaking the white balance and then clicking the auto adjust button again to see the different results.
2. Again using the grayscale mode, adjust the grayscale conversion sliders to make different colors map to shades of gray.
BIG TIP: there's a tiny little Target icon in the HSL panel - this is the targeted adjustment tool. CLick on this to activate it. Then, in your image, place your cursor over an area to be adjusted, and click/drag your mouse up to lighten or down to darken. This modifies the grayscale conversion based on hue and saturation.
(The crosshairs are the area being adjusted, the target is just there for show)
Remember to click to turn off this targeted adjustment tool when you're done!
3. For the most control over b/w conversion in LR, keep your image in color mode. Then, in HSL/Saturation drag all the individual saturation sliders to -100. Then go to the Hue and Luminance tabs, and adjust the hue sliders to get darker or lighter gray tones from the original color components.
Even though you have all the saturation pulled out, LR still knows the original values, and will use those in the adjustments. So a blue can be made darker, and orange lighter, etc.
Finally, regardless of the b/w conversion method, once you've gotten the basic colors mapped to the gray tone you intended, you may still need to tweak the Tone Curve.
Once again, the best way to do this is interactively using the targeted adjustment tool.
In Tone Curve, click to activate the targeted adjustment tool (the tiny target). In the image, click and drag up or down to selectively darken or lighten areas of the tone curve. (Or use the up/down arrow keys, which I prefer.)
IMHO the targeted adjustment tool is one of the coolest features of Lightroom. With it you can make local adjustments to selective areas of the image WITHOUT MASKS.
If you're not using Lightroom for your b/w conversions, start today!
Otherwise - in Photoshop - use either the Channel Mixer (old) or the newer Black and White adjustment following the same principles as above.
The main idea is to visualize how you want the image to look in b/w - what is dark, what is light, etc. - and adjust the color components accordingly.
And you might need to go into Photoshop to dodge & burn.
Posted by Ken Wyatt on January 19, 2008 at 12:59 AM
I agree with Nat. Nice comp, but you've got a whole lot of midtone. Check out the work of Clyde Butcher www.clydebutcher.com or (of course) Ansel Adams www.anseladams.com/index.html. I believe by adding more contrast, your image will look bunches better. Nice complete answer Nat!
Ken
Posted by John De Bord on January 19, 2008 at 10:57 AM
Ohhhh Clyde is the MAN! I love hos work as much as Ansel's and just noticed that on Clyde's website, there are 2 brand spankin' new PBS videos out that u can watch right there. Hint guys!
Posted by Les Barstow on January 19, 2008 at 12:00 PM
This was a bit of an experiment. I used ACR's B&W conversion tool, which has 8(?) sliders based on the colors. I pulled the tree out from the BG pretty okay, but since I don't have much background in B&W, I'm kind of hunting otherwise. Thanks for the extensive tips, Nat - I'll take some time at it tomorrow and see what I can come up with...
Posted by Nat Coalson on January 22, 2008 at 8:34 PM
Butcher and Adams are fine examples but their process is different enough from modern digital workflow that it's hard to know what to draw from in terms of processing. They shoot bw film; it's a whole different thing converting to bw from color.
In all cases, though - and the strength of the bw masters - the key is pre-visualization - seeing in your mind the way the picture should look when it's done. Then, regardless of the path you choose, you have a destination. And you'll know when you've arrived. This applies to each and every image you produce.
Having a vision for the final outcome, and then learning the skills, using the tools, are essential. You have to see it ahead of time to know where you're going with the processing.
But with digital, as with Adams famous darkroom work, localized dodging and burning is almost always required to get the most from the capture.
Discussion
5 repliesA suggestion - the midtone contrast is flat and could use some work. It looks like you have the black point and white points about right, but everything in between is really low contrast.
I'm interested to know about your method of b/w conversion.
If you're using Lightroom, you can try a few different methods using Virtual Copies.
1. Try a straight "grayscale" (but still really rgb) conversion letting LR auto-adjust. When using this method, try tweaking the white balance and then clicking the auto adjust button again to see the different results.
2. Again using the grayscale mode, adjust the grayscale conversion sliders to make different colors map to shades of gray.
BIG TIP: there's a tiny little Target icon in the HSL panel - this is the targeted adjustment tool. CLick on this to activate it. Then, in your image, place your cursor over an area to be adjusted, and click/drag your mouse up to lighten or down to darken. This modifies the grayscale conversion based on hue and saturation.
(The crosshairs are the area being adjusted, the target is just there for show)
Remember to click to turn off this targeted adjustment tool when you're done!
3. For the most control over b/w conversion in LR, keep your image in color mode. Then, in HSL/Saturation drag all the individual saturation sliders to -100. Then go to the Hue and Luminance tabs, and adjust the hue sliders to get darker or lighter gray tones from the original color components.
Even though you have all the saturation pulled out, LR still knows the original values, and will use those in the adjustments. So a blue can be made darker, and orange lighter, etc.
Finally, regardless of the b/w conversion method, once you've gotten the basic colors mapped to the gray tone you intended, you may still need to tweak the Tone Curve.
Once again, the best way to do this is interactively using the targeted adjustment tool.
In Tone Curve, click to activate the targeted adjustment tool (the tiny target). In the image, click and drag up or down to selectively darken or lighten areas of the tone curve. (Or use the up/down arrow keys, which I prefer.)
IMHO the targeted adjustment tool is one of the coolest features of Lightroom. With it you can make local adjustments to selective areas of the image WITHOUT MASKS.
If you're not using Lightroom for your b/w conversions, start today!
Otherwise - in Photoshop - use either the Channel Mixer (old) or the newer Black and White adjustment following the same principles as above.
The main idea is to visualize how you want the image to look in b/w - what is dark, what is light, etc. - and adjust the color components accordingly.
And you might need to go into Photoshop to dodge & burn.
Ken
In all cases, though - and the strength of the bw masters - the key is pre-visualization - seeing in your mind the way the picture should look when it's done. Then, regardless of the path you choose, you have a destination. And you'll know when you've arrived. This applies to each and every image you produce.
Having a vision for the final outcome, and then learning the skills, using the tools, are essential. You have to see it ahead of time to know where you're going with the processing.
But with digital, as with Adams famous darkroom work, localized dodging and burning is almost always required to get the most from the capture.