Converting to Black and White

[BigRed]

I've converted a photo I submitted recently to black and white to give it more impact, which do you prefer?

[The Fresh Prince]

Black and white.

[friscofrankie]

ihn this instance I prefer the color shot. Perhaps if he B&W was brightened a bit? THe great thngs about B&W is the contrasts you get and this shot seems to have gotten just a tad too dark.
my two minute effort:


Maybe a shade too bright?

[melvbot]

Black and white. Always gives a bit more effect for me. Certain shots look much better in B&W. FF is way too bright stick with the yours it seems spot on to me.

[friscofrankie]

yeah mine was too bright, but the original was a fuck of a lot darker (cheater) before
During the a break in work I played with it a few more minutes and came up with a different one but Red'll just tweak it again

[melvbot]

Depends on how bright the monitors set at as well so it could look OK to one person and bright to another. The niggles of digital photography

[BigRed]

I did apologise in my edit FF. It was a lot darker originally, don't understand why. I think viewing it next to a bright colour version makes it look darker and also the scale of it. The original in isolation and filling a monitor looked much better.

Just for interest, I duplicated the photo then used the Channel Mixer on the copy, ticking the greyscale option and using 80% Red, 30% Green, 10% Blue (yes, I know thats more than 100%). This left the eyes and hair too dark so I converted the original by desaturating it and used a soft brush with 50% opacity to selectively erase the top layer around the eyes and hair.

I'm gessing I should really have gone for two copies and adjusted the one for the highlights and the other for the shadows then erased one to show the other with a soft brush again, but I'm quite happy with the result I got. As I said earlier, the bigger it is, the better it looks.

[El Gibbon]

Flock me with all the great photographers and PS experts, might we have a photo thread on the main page? How about it DD?

One click away rather than drilling.

E. G.

[klongmaster]

the 'western' on the t-shirt had a certain je ne sai quoi about it

[friscofrankie]

OK then, While trying to figure out how to enable a dblclick event then disable then re-enable the fuckin thing I took a minute to play with this. The guy's face has character while not truly Black & White" it came out OK.

I desaturated the pic first, stretched the histogram a bit, the color curves down for each color then boosted value curve just a hair.

[El Gibbon]

One of the attributes that make the original so appealing to me was the highlighted grey in the gentleman's hair (shows age and character).

They seemed to get 'lost' or mis-handled in converting to B&W. FF this last effort has redeemed those qualities. Well done. I tried it myself and could not get it right.

E. G.

[BigRed]

That looks great FF.

[flash]

this is a picture i was trying to convert to B&W a while ago, the background looks really good pretty dark but i was losing most of the detail in the faces, I don't know much about adjusting curves and that other stuff you 2 were doing. maybe you guys could play around with it a bit and tell us how you did it, maybe it should be cropped etc.

I think this photo could look quite dramatic if done correctly in black and white

[friscofrankie]

I do not use Photoshop nor am I some kind of GIMP Guru, But I made an effort, more for a learning experience than to provide any real help. Problem was that the foreground got dark when desaturating the image. So I created a duplicate layer, and using the threshold tool I created a very dark image in that layer. I selected the pure black areas using "Select by Color." I then created and selected a new transparent layer and filled thatselected area with white. In the mode drop down I selected "soft light" and adjusted the opacity a bit.

Still not satisfied I created another duplicate layer applied the threashold tool again this time I selected the white areas by color then selecting the top transparent layer that had out highlights I filled the selected areas with black,leaving hte sft light mode selected for this layer and opacity the same I cam up with this.


THe background is still a bit blown out and I'm sure some photoshop guru with his Fill-flash tool will come along and produce much better results. I think now I should have used two different transparent layers when filing with black & white.
Was an interesting exercise to help wake me up over my morning coffee and cigarettes. Coffee's not yet done might play with it a bit more.

[friscofrankie]

A second effort as the coffee pot works it's way to empty. This time I tried working on the image in color, I squeezed (stretched?) the different color leve histograms individually, and then proceeded to add the fill layer without adding a darkening layer.



I think this method brought out more foreground details while darkening the background a bit more. I'm still wandering around in the dark with this but am learning things as I go.

[Frankenstein]

Definite improvement on the second one, not quite there though. The highlights on their foreheads look like they have been cut open and then put back again.

[friscofrankie]

yeah maybe a bit less opacity. Also noticeable, is one tree trunk in the background that has areas totally blacked out. I had planned on adding a Gaussian blur to the highlight & low light layers and that may have rendered but as I was getting my Saturday Morning Breakfast the ol' lady decided to clean my desk... Although mTV does a pretty good show called "*** Unplugged" desktop computers do not perform well in that condition.

I may be wrong and photoshop may have some more powerful pre-built scripts for this or the individual faces may need to be worked up individually in transparency and then pasted in as new layers. Would like to try the Gaussian Blur thing, though; perhaps later when I've finished real work.

I'm still pretty new to digital photography and photo editing; but enjoy the challenge and, many times, the results.

[Marmite the Dog]

I've just had a play.

First pic is more 'dramatic' in my opinion and the second is less processed and I left it uncropped.

[Norton]

For me the second is superior. The faces in the first have been darkened to the point where the delightful expressions of the kids are obscured. I would have used the burn and dodge tool to give the desired background to face emphasis.

[flash]

you have got the background looking good, my effort here has lost all the detail in the trees and bush



i don't know how to do layers, i imagine you could use the history brush if 2 layers were used to get a good balance between the detail in the faces and the background.

anyone know how to apply layers?

[flash]

For me the second is superior. The faces in the first have been darkened to the point where the delightful expressions of the kids are obscured. Without the original hard to tell what you had to start with. I would have used the burn and dodge tool to give the desired background to face emphasis.

Yeah thats my problem, i wanted to keep the detail in the faces but it leaves the rest looking washed out and lifeless.

what is the maximum size of file that can be uploaded to the gallery. i can stick in a bigger one if that would help?

[Marmite the Dog]

Making dark bits lighter and light bits darker is easy. Just use the Shadow/Highlights tool (Image-> Adjustments-> Shadow/Highlight).

You really don't need to dick about with layers.

[Norton]

i don't know how to do layers, i imagine you could use the history brush if 2 layers were used to get a good balance between the detail in the faces and the background.

Don't think using layers is the way I would go. You can do a lot with using Marmites suggestion or the one I suggested.

[flash]

cheers i'll give it a go

[Camel Toe]

Definably a matter of lighting extremes. You have to decide what is in the photograph that makes it interesting, the faces or the jungle. Ansel Adams had the Zone method and all his photos were B&W, and they were dazzling, but with an 8X10 camera. A straight shot with ordinary B&W film gives you eight zones from white to black The zone system gives you ten. I hate to pose an answer with Marmite near by cause he does Photoshop a lot better than me. I doubt through Photoshop we could get the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. First off those tones would have to appear in the image, and they probably don't.
Dodging the faces while saturating the background is about all you could do, in the darkroom that is.