Help needed with monochrome

[harrysixtie7]

I have tried my hand at black and white before whithout producing solid results. This time I played around in Aperture a little more to see what I could do. Please let me know if I am heading in the right direction, and what else I can do to improve my images. Thanks in advance

[wulf]

It is hard to comment on that - partly because a lot is a matter of taste and partly because it is hard to judge direction of travel without earlier and later attempts. I would say that these look a little dark but that is as much down to the lighting (eg. sun behind the kid on the scooter) as the processing.

What approach did you use to convert these?

Wulf

[harrysixtie7]

Originally Posted by wulf

It is hard to comment on that - partly because a lot is a matter of taste and partly because it is hard to judge direction of travel without earlier and later attempts. I would say that these look a little dark but that is as much down to the lighting (eg. sun behind the kid on the scooter) as the processing.

What approach did you use to convert these?

Wulf

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35690704@N05/3484440825/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35690704@N05/3481877642/

Above are the color originals. I initially adjusted the white balance in each. For the first one I used a red filter then reduced saturation. With the kid on the scooter the sunrise was directly behind him and did make it challenging, but if I remember correctly I used a blue filter and reduced saturation. I dont know the proper way to convert to mono, I just tweaked until I liked them.

[dcclark]

I agree largely with wulf... B&W is a matter of taste, but they do appear to be a bit dark. You may need to start dodging a bit -- especially on the child's face, which is hidden in some shadows.

You may want to consider using the Channel Mixer (in Photoshop or Gimp) to convert to monochrome. This lets you choose how much the red, green, and blue channels contribute to the final image -- if your image has prominent areas which feature a single color, you can turn them very dark or very light, for a dramatic effect (you can turn down the blue channel to get a dark sky, for example).

[wulf]

Directly comparing the pairs of pictures (opening both in separate tabs in Firefox and flicking between them) it is interesting how much the tonal contrasts have changed. For example, the child's face is much darker in comparison to the rest of the scene after the conversion.

I agree with David that the Channel Mixer tool is an excellent way to go. Using The Gimp, I decompose my image into RGB channels, decide which one to use as the starting point and then use the others, overlaid in various modes and translucencies, to refine it (possibly with layer masks as well).

I don't know what options are available in Aperture. Anyone?

Wulf

[harrysixtie7]

Aperture has a custom filter, where I you can adjust for each color. I will have to try this. I have installed CS3 but have yet to put it to use, I need to study up and see what I can do.

Thanks for the suggestions, I didnt notice how much the darkness in the face did change after the conversion. My goal was to remove a lot of the excess light on top of the head, but unintentionally darkened the face too much. I will play with it again tonight and maybe find a middle ground between a few different colors.

[kencaleno]

Just applied a little contrast/sharpen/hdr for these results:

To convert to black and white from color,I would recommend:

Ctrl+J
Image> Calculations
Background layer
Red
Background Layer
Red
Multiply
New channel
Image> Mode> Greyscale
flatten/save

If resulting image is too dark

Ctrl+J blend mode (screen) use opacity slider to get desired result.

Regards, Ken

[harrysixtie7]

Originally Posted by kencaleno

Just applied a little contrast/sharpen/hdr for these results:

To convert to black and white from color,I would recommend:

Ctrl+J
Image> Calculations
Background layer
Red
Background Layer
Red
Multiply
New channel
Image> Mode> Greyscale
flatten/save

If resulting image is too dark

Ctrl+J blend mode (screen) use opacity slider to get desired result.

Regards, Ken

Those look great, thanks a lot. I finally opened up Photoshop last night and messed around with photo merge, tonight I will give monochrome a try. Thanks for the tutorial, I really like the squirrel image now.