High Contrast Black and White

[superduperwesman]

I remembered this "How To" from the high contrast black and white assignment:
How to Make High Contrast Black & Whites in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2

So today I finally went back to give it a try. Let me know what you think.
Before:


After:


The first step in the "How To" is to convert to greyscale which I did but after making the all the adjustments I shut off the greyscale to see how the color image would look after all the same adjustments en-route to the high contrast black and white. Here's the result:



In case you can't tell, my wife likes elephant ears

[LongLens]

The finished photo looks great.

[i speak in math]

But the result is decidedly low contrast...Almost no shadows in the face. Just because you raise the contrast in photoshop, that doesn't make it a high contrast image.

Now this is high contrast. Notice the range of pure whites to pure blacks, almost no gray in the image at all.

[superduperwesman]

Yeah that's kind of why I posted. While I followed the steps I felt like the image wasn't as high contrast as it should be. Kinda confirmed this last nigh too. I was using Aperture for the first time which has high contrast presets and the result was more white/black then what the tutorial output. Granted the tutorial outlines adjusting the sliders until things "look right" so I obviously am still working on my eye for what "looks right".

Thanks for the feedback I'll post an other try from Aperture a little later.

[i speak in math]

Originally Posted by superduperwesman

Yeah that's kind of why I posted. While I followed the steps I felt like the image wasn't as high contrast as it should be. Kinda confirmed this last nigh too. I was using Aperture for the first time which has high contrast presets and the result was more white/black then what the tutorial output. Granted the tutorial outlines adjusting the sliders until things "look right" so I obviously am still working on my eye for what "looks right".

Thanks for the feedback I'll post an other try from Aperture a little later.

I fear you've missed my point entirely.

[superduperwesman]

Your saying I should have no grey

[superduperwesman]

Is that right? Please enlighten me

[i speak in math]

Yes and no. You can't take an image shot in low contrast lighting and turn it into a high contrast photo. It doesn't work that way. Your original shot has to be taken in high contrast lighting for the photo to be high contrast. You can crank up the contrast all you want in photoshop, but that will just destroy image data. So, yes, primarily blacks and whites with as little gray as possible. But you want to achieve this before photoshop. High contrast photos are about lighting and that's not something you can fake later on in post.