My Black and White Conversion Process

[Steven Dempsey]

I shoot RAW with the in-camera style set to Monochrome. This enables me to check the shot in the field and get a general idea of how it is looking in black and white. Of course, because I’m shooting RAW, the full color information is being recorded. This is critical for quality black and white conversions.

Once I’m back at my computer, I import my selected shots into Lightroom. There, I digitally develop each shot using the Camera RAW controls. The controls I most use are EXPOSURE, RECOVERY and FILL LIGHT. I try not to mess too much with the exposure control because I’ve pretty much accurately metered for the scene while I’m shooting it. Sometimes small tweaks are necessary.

The RECOVERY slider is essential for high contrast scenes. Recovering detail in bright skies is one application of the slider. You can recover almost two stops using it. Next, I add a little FILL LIGHT if necessary to introduce a little more detail in the shadows. Once I have a balanced and flat image, I export to Photoshop.

The magic takes place at this point. There is a company called Nik Software that produces some really fantastic plug-ins for Photoshop. The ones I use the most are Viveza and SilverEfex Pro. The latter is the best black and white conversion tool in the industry in my opinion (and I have used them all).

Viveza 2 allows me to select areas of the photograph and locally change the brightness, contrast, saturation or clarity/sharpness (what Nik calls “Structure). Basically, it’s a sophisticated way of dodging and burning your photograph to bring out details or hide them…whatever you need to do. I will spend a significant amount of time adding dimension to the scene using this tool. This is where it becomes a more three-dimensional picture. Once I’m satisfied with this, I open up SilverEfex Pro.

This tool has the same ability to select sections of your photograph which you can work on separately using the same parameters of brightness, contrast and structure (no saturation, obviously). You can then emphasize or de-emphasize color information in your photographs by using color sliders. You can boost the blue slider, for instance, to darken a blue sky and make it more dramatic (you are looking at all of this, of course, in black and white). The more color in your photograph, the more you can manipulate the gray tones using these sliders. This is why it’s so important to shoot RAW so that you have all the color information to play with which eventually translates to different grayscale tones in your photograph.

I usually start out making a global change in the Structure so that the overall clarity of the photograph is enhanced. It just has to be this way for black and white to really pop. I then make some subtle changes, globally, to the contrast and brightness. When I’m happy with all of that, I will start working on individual parts of the photograph with the selection tool, essentially dodging and burning.

Once that’s done, I will apply one of SilverEfex’s many film presets to the shot. Each preset includes the unique characteristics of a particular film by Kodak or Fuji, etc. The film’s grain profile is also integrated into this preset but what makes Nik’s software unique is that the image is basically rebuilt using their grain engine, it’s not simply an overlay ala Photoshop. This is when you really begin to see the transition from a digital original to something much more organic and film-like. It’s really amazing how it can transform a picture.

This is the point in the pipleline where I tweak the preset using the individual color sliders to make things advance or recede. Once I’m happy with the overall look of the photograph, I add a tiny amount of sepia tone. This warms the picture up a little without giving it that vintage look. Some of the photographs I’ve posted on this board have included a little more of that effect than I’d like but I have since toned it down.

Once I’m back in Photoshop, I’ll do a final levels adjustment and that’s about it.

Let me know if anything is unclear or if you have any additional questions.

[teaking]

When you say check tonal values of the scene do you mean on a simplified zone system? so you decide that dress is white but I want it white with detail so that will be +1 2/3 and her skin is white so that should be +1 etc etc and then use your meter to take the shot with those settings?

Just trying to get an idea to help me and maybe others who read this thread understand your process a bit better.

[Steven Dempsey]

Sorry to mislead you.

It's nothing as sophisticated as that for me because I can just do a general evaluation in my mind of where the challenges are going to be. If there is a lot of contrast, for instance, I make the appropriate decisions based on what I'm willing to under- or overexpose beyond my established subject.

I also have a mental image of the detail I can reclaim while shooting Camera RAW so it's really more of a mental exercise.

Doing lighting evaluations on multiple parts of a scene works for some people but I usually don't have the time.

[i speak in math]

My reason for the snarky comment was that there you aren't doing any converting here. You are using presets in a plugin that someone else made. They are doing the conversion. You are just going through a list of preset choices and choosing the one that looks best. You see how this isn't really a b&w conversion on your part? I understand the post processing involved before hand is hard work; Tweaking images in camera raw, adjusting exposure to certain parts of the image and such. But the actual b&w conversion is just choosing from a list. The whole program was written to make creating black and whites as easy as choosing a film type and adjusting some sliders for toning. You see how this isn't your conversion process?

I would love to see the results of your work, though, especially compared to the original image and some other b&w conversion methods (like just desaturating it, or using the b&w adjustment layer). I appreciate a good black and white image no matter how it was done.

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by i speak in math

so, your b&w conversion consists of taking a picture and then pressing a button in the silverefex plugin?

thank you.

[Steven Dempsey]

In the interest of clarification, I have modified my original post to only include the post production process.

[Steven Dempsey]

Originally Posted by i speak in math

My reason for the snarky comment was that there you aren't doing any converting here. You are using presets in a plugin that someone else made. They are doing the conversion. You are just going through a list of preset choices and choosing the one that looks best. You see how this isn't really a b&w conversion on your part? I understand the post processing involved before hand is hard work; Tweaking images in camera raw, adjusting exposure to certain parts of the image and such. But the actual b&w conversion is just choosing from a list. The whole program was written to make creating black and whites as easy as choosing a film type and adjusting some sliders for toning. You see how this isn't your conversion process?

I would love to see the results of your work, though, especially compared to the original image and some other b&w conversion methods (like just desaturating it, or using the b&w adjustment layer). I appreciate a good black and white image no matter how it was done.

I appreciate the clarity but the "process" of my black and white conversion happens inside Silver Efex Pro. It doesn't matter that this is a plugin, what it really provides is a set of tools akin to what is available in a darkroom. It's not that I just press a button and it's done. The ability to easily select certain areas of the photograph to work on separately from the whole make it easier than the rather clunky dodge and burn tools in Photoshop. Perhaps I didn't spell out all the nuances that are necessary to create a wonderful black and white shot using SEP but there is quite a lot of work to be done inside this tool to produce convincing results.

Here are a few examples of my work...I don't have the before shots at hand, these are the finished black and whites:

[i speak in math]

The first and second shots are gorgeous. I actually just saw the hand shot in the how I took it forum.

[teaking]

For all those with photoshop and gimp you can use grey scale copy of your image set as the layer mask in a new transparent layer set to overlay mode and use the opacity slider to effect how strong it is this will effect the shadows layer needs to be an inverted grey scale copy of your image in the layer mask, for highlights you need a grey scale copy of your image as the layer mask in a new transparent layer. You can use the curves tool on the layer mask to edit the grey scale copy it will be the black in the layer mask that will be where the dodging and burning takes place so adjust your curves to taste. By drawing on the transparent layer on either shadows highlights in black or white will dodge and bur the image in wither just shadow areas or highlight areas.

Just incase anyone was thinking how to control what was being dodged and burned