Best technique for BW Conversion

[rachel_r]

I'm sure this has already been discussed somewhere... please feel free to redirect me if I am being redundant...

I am a bit frustrated with the BW conversions I've been doing. I just feel that they are lacking something... My general technique is the following steps:

1. Channel Mixer - Monochrome - depending on the image I mix the channels accordingly but I tend to go with a 70/30/5 (R/G/B)on a lot of images
2. Add a color burn layer - up to 15% opacity
3. Add a soft light layer - up to 30% opacity

I read this technique somewhere and like it but maybe I'm just not doing something right.

What is your technique? Are there any techniques that seem to be better than others? I am very interested in finding out all the different methods and trying them out...

[Merlyn]

Rachel, at the bottom of the Channel Mixer is a slider (Constant), have you tried adjusting this prior to the burn and soft light layer? Adjust to the negitive maybe -10 or so. Everything else you have adjusted looks ok.

[googlit]

There are SO many ways to change to b&w... the "right" was is whatever looks good to you. This is what I tend to do:

go to the channels palette and look at the red, green, and blue channels. take note of the one(s) that look the best to you. You may like one part of the photo in the green channel, but another in the red.

then I change the mode to LAB color and look at the lightness channel. sometimes that looks the best to me. select all and copy. undo until you're back in RGB mode, then paste.

with the background layer selected, copy and paste the color channels you like.

you can play with the blending modes, opacities, and layer orders of your b&w layers until you get something you like. I'll often mask out some parts, maybe duplicate a layer, and I play a lot with the blending modes.

I find that doing this gives me a lot more control than the channel mixer, but it takes a lot more time, too.

I tend to do everything the complicated way. :) but I'm crazy like that.

[rachel_r]

merlyn - yes I have tried that but for me it always seems to be too "constant" if that even makes sense... i usually like to lighten or darken only sections of the image so I end up doing it manually using masks. Sometimes I'll get an image that does benefit from that feature though and it makes things much easier...

googlit - yes your version does seem complex! I will have to try it out though because I would love to perfect my methods as well...

thanks for the suggestions guys

[Gunsotsu]

My own method differs somewhat. I desaturate the image and then play with the curves and the contrast to achieve the results I like.

[Krimo]

Here is a tutorial I found a log time ago, it works pretty well. (a bit long sorry for that :confused: )



Step One
Open the color photo you want to convert into a high-contrast black-and-white image. Press the letter D to set your Foreground color to black, and then from the Create New Adjustment Layer pop-up menu at the bottom of the Layers palette, choose Gradient Map.

Step Two
When the Gradient Map dialog appears, it shows the Foreground to Background gradient by default (and because you chose black and white as your Foreground/Background colors, the gradient will be black and white). You don't have to do anything here, just click OK to apply this gradient map to your photo.

Step Three
Believe it or not, just the simple act of applying this black-to-white gradient map will usually give you a much better grayscale conversion than the standard method of choosing Grayscale from the Image menu's Mode submenu. But there's one drawbackif it doesn't look great, there's nothing you can do to the gradient map because there's really nothing to adjust. So, in the next step, we add the ability to adjust our black-and-white conversion.

Step Four
Go to the Layers palette, and from the Create New Adjustment Layer pop-up menu, choose Channel Mixer. As you learned earlier in this chapter, you can use Channel Mixer to adjust the individual color channels of an image to create a better grayscale. Well, we're going to use it to adjust our image that's already grayscale, giving it the extreme contrast it so richly deserves.

Step Five
Click on the Monochrome checkbox in the bottom left-hand corner of the dialog (otherwise, when you move the sliders, you'll get color tints instead of grayscale tweaks).

Step Six
Here's where the fun begins. The technique starts with two predetermined steps: (1) Lower the Constant slider (at the bottom) to -8 to darken the entire photo, and (2) lower the Red channel to around 75% (I do this on every image). Now, you're going to increase the Green and Blue channels to create the extreme contrast. How much do you move them? For this image, I moved the Green to 26% and the Blue to 34%, but I came up with those numbers using a tried-and-true method, which I will disclose (for the first time ever) in the next step.

Step Seven
I started dragging the Green slider to the right, and I kept dragging it as long as the photo continued to look better. As soon as it started to look bad, I stopped. Then, I did the exact same thing with the Blue slider. It sounds silly, but think about ithow can that not work? If it makes the photo look betterkeep doing it. If it stops looking better, stop. Once I clicked OK, I went to the Layers palette's flyout menu and chose Flatten Image (don't do this just yet if you want to try out the other methods). Then I went to the Filter menu, under Sharpen, and I added an Unsharp Mask filter with the settings: Amount 85%, Radius 1 pixel, and Threshold 4 levels.

[jinxworld]

@ Krimo: This is the "Scott's High-Contrast-Black-and-White Techique" from Scott Kelby's 'The Photoshop CS2 book'

and....that's the technique I use :)

[Morca007]

The times, they are a-changin. In the upcoming CS3, there is an actual, honest-to-god Black and white adjustment layer. I played with it in the CS3 beta and fell in love.

[Pewari]

I know this is technically cheating, but for black and white shots I tend to use the Virtual Photographer (http://www.optikvervelabs.com/) plugin (works in Paintshop Pro as well as Photoshop and other image software). Very nice interface to use, you get previews of everything and you can fine tune it to the exact results you want.

I've never managed to digitally manipulate it "by hand" as effectively.

[Triglav]

I am just lazy. I use Johny's B&W + Tint Tones Photoshop Action. Really a great action for B&W but also for dutones. I really love this action. And after execute the action, the image can still be tweaked to your likings.
http://www.outdooreyes.com/photo52.php3

[KagoGrl]

Krimo's method for B/W conversion is the one I use all the time... allows you to have finite control over your contrast. I tend to go with high contrast b/w photos, so I prefer this method. Using Grayscale and then playing with the Channel Mixer allows for great control over the final look of your shot.

[apdz]

I use lightroom.. usually just convert the photo to B&W and bump up the contrast and blacks.... O_O;

[Kvikken]

I know this is an old thread, but it's interesting and fascinating to read how people convert pictures to black and white in so many different ways, so if there's more people like me, they'll get even another way, even though it's not so different from what others here do :D

I usually focus on getting the contrast up, a lot, I love high contrast pictures, and I think contrast is a key when it comes to black and white pictures. So I use curves and black and white layers set to the blending modes of soft light, overlay, hard light, screen or multiply, depending on the picture and what I want to achieve. Then I use the black and white adjustment in CS3 to convert to black and white. I usually try out the presets and work out from one I think looks good.
When the picture is converted to black and white, I usually think it needs even more contrast, and use the same means as in the first step of getting contrast.

[rickysu]

My own method differs somewhat. I desaturate the image and then play with the curves and the contrast to achieve the results I like.
same here :D

[willow]

I often use Digidaan's channel mixer. It can only be used in Adobe Photoshop but have it in my presets for easy access. You can also download the action separately.

There are three mixtures to choose from:
* DigiDaanNC.cha is the normal contrast basic conversion, suitable for most pictures.
* DigiDaanHC.cha is the high contrast mixer, to spice up those soft-lighted pics.
* DigiDaanOF.cha is the orange filter mixer, as if the pictures were taken with an orange filter. Very nice for blue skies and gives skin tones that semi-infrared look!
http://www.digidaan.nl/indexframedigidaan.html?channelmixer/index.html