Digital color pics converted to B/W

[Rick]

Great tip Gare - I gave it a try with and old photo I had 

[Gare]

An old photo, Rick? She looks too young to vote.

But it works well, eh? I learned this from an Adobe tech back in 1993. Adobe's site has a lot of great info; also some urban legends such as 300dpi for high-res output. Folks, if you got a HD crunch, 266 pixels/inch is mathematically correct to print to 2540 dpi, because 2540=133lpi, which is half the ppi value...but harder to remember.

My Best,

Gare

[Raven Song]

Hi Rick!  Welcome aboard! That worked great on the photo.

Gary offered his wonderful Abo image to try a conversion on (thanks Gary!) so for fun (using PS Elements 4 only) I tried one by eyeball adjusting shades of gray just by what I liked.  I changed the saturation of reds and yellows, and cyans a bit and lightened and darkened them a little, then used a screen layer and multiply layers of varying opacity.

Maybe someone could convert the color version with the LAB mode for comparison.
---Crow
P.S.  I'm trying to recover from a back injury and sciatica so haven't been able to be at the computer lately.

[ronmatt]

http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/8958 ... .jpg      LARGE VERSION

When you convert a color photo to greyscale as in the photo of the girl, you must adjust fir the 'red' hue of the skintone and watch for potential 'hotspots'. The way I do that, is to make an 'adjustment brush' from the [red channel, in this case] Using that brush 1:1 on the photo allows me to control the shadow density and the mid-range tonal properties. As you can see, the original greyscale skintones are over saturated giving that 'converted' look and the 'halftone break' is too harsh ( see shoulder ) the shadow is also 100%. If this was to go to press, it would look muddy. Applying the brushes, I smoothed the halftone break, reduced tho shadow to 81% and de-saturated the skintones, and virtually eliminated the 'hotspots ( eyebrow, lip and possibly forehead ) Then I did some minor curve adjustment. This now will print much cleaner, allowing for some inevitable press gain

[ronmatt]

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/1158/s ... .jpg  LARGE VERSION

This is not the right place to post this but...where is? I'mgoing to be spending some time in the future, re-learning some old photo manipulation techniques I once did 'exclusively' in PS. Some are interesting, thought I'd share. Credit goes to Rick for the original photo. I had it up from when I did the greyscale thing and couldn't resist playing with it. ( pretty ladies do that to me )

[ronmatt]

when I converted this to greyscale, the first thing that struck me was how flat it was. So acting on that first impression I did a few things that drastically changed it 1] opened the shadows in the 'ruins' 2] created contrast between the sky and horizon 3] created separation between the grass in the foreground and the stone wall structure. they were exactly the save grey values.
4] darkened the trees and distant mountains. This all was done by isolating these different areas and applying different curves to each area.

[Raven Song]

I like the styles you used on the girl's photo, ron, and also the conversion you worked on the ruins!  Very nice, it gives a brighter day and more depth to the photo's appearance. 
---Crow

[Raven Song]

It's so fun trying different bw conversions!  I had a bit of fun with my b-day photo from a few days ago (this old bird turned 49 -- whew!  I need Gare's "Time Flies" t-shirt transfer!)  and converted that image in PS combined with a created landscape I made recently.  I gave this version a sepia-like tone.
---Crow

[geden3]

Great B'Day image Maya.  Done very well.  I love the tone on it.  It is interesting to see how others see and do conversions.  You guys did some nice conversion on the Abo image.  What I think is really interesting is B&W as opposed to color in such an interpretive medium and we each see something different and depending on the conversion technique you can change the mood and the entire feel of the image.  So many techniques out there you have to know more then one because each image reacts differently.  My conversion was a little different on Abo'  I used the channel mixer with +60 Red and +40 Blue.  Then I greyscaled it and went to the Duotone mode and used one of the warm duotone presets.  Last I just brought up the exposure a bit.  For me I chose to keep the deep shadows.  It gave me a greater feeling of abandonment and mystery.  Just my take 

Gary

[Raven Song]

Thanks Gary!  Good to see ya back.  I plan to get to sketching those snow leopards soon.

I find working with the photos in bw such a lot of fun, and like you say, changes in the bw tones creates changes in the entire feel and attitude of a piece.  Although colors affect the mood of a picture also, I'm finding more and more I want to experiment with a bw version of something first...oftentimes it (the bw mood) suggests an entirely different set of colors later than even what it may have had originally, then after forming a bw version with a certain feel to it I want to experiement on it with different colors, or sometimes prefer to leave it in a bw form.  It's extremely expressive!

---Maya

[ronmatt]

We'', how 'bout them duotones. I don't think there's anything sweeter than a well executed [black on black] or [black on grey] duo. for creating mood and bringing out detail. I'm going to do one and post it.

[Gare]

A suite of plug-ins for Photoshop that I find particularly welcome for enhancing B & Ws is Digital Film Tools' 55mm v. 6 . If anything, the suite is overkill--there's around 40 filters that can be used to fairly faithfully reproduce just about any lens effect and emulsion effect, from grain, to really antiquing an image with streaks and blotches, to crosstar highlights. It's about $225 for the suite; pricey, but worth it for photographers--no cutesy embossed fractals or such.

I used the Halo filter to emphasize some ranges in this pic that has an interesting subject but lousy overhead fluorescent lighting. I sort of stumbled into the 55mm series; it was available for After Effects prior to Photoshop--you ought to see what you can to with animating these filter effects! They're Win and Mac and the site offers a demo download.

Funny about sepiatones. I spent years removing sepia aging from heirloom pics for a photo finishing studio, but I'm a sucker for the look when you have a pic that was taken yesterday with posers in vintage costumes and you want it to look old. It works with Raven's photo and Gary's scene definitely looks moody with the sepia patina. Remember the stench in the darkroom with physical sepia toner?

There are other duotones in PS--I used a steeltone on an old family monochrome that worked effectively--the original was plain boring for a frame on the wall in B&W. I guess you have to consider the subject.

Let's remember that duotones are for printing and were originally developed to compensate for pigment impurities. PS's presets show the exact distribution curves for the duotone pigments; they were calculated to compensate for falloff in the midtones. Interestingly, Photoshop Elements has a "vintage photo" macro that just uses Hue/Saturation's Colorize effect. Not subtle, but effective eye candy.

Also, Flaming Pear has a plug-in called Melancholytron that not only sepias out a photo, but messes with the tone mapping and does vignette blurring to produce an effect that would take much longer manually.

My Best,

Gare