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Please teach me BW conversion

T

tokengirl

Guest
So, no comments from the original poster?

All that work from Bob and myself! :(
Not everyone has access to the internet 24/7 - maybe he is traveling or working? Give it time, I'm sure he'll be back.

My attempt:



I imported it into Lightroom and did the following:
a) set the blacks level at 3
b) increased the vibrance to 20
c) added some low (0.7) radius sharpening
d) applied some noise reduction
e) applied a correction for the chromatic aberration

Then I exported it to Silver Efex Pro and did the following:
a) selected the "High Structure" preset
b) applied a green filter
c) added a slight vignette
d) added the gold tone preset (because it's Paris, right?) and decreased the intensity a little

Then I opened it in Photoshop and did the following:
a) added the border
b) applied a slight curves adjustment

The B&W conversion took all of two minutes at most. I spent more time making corrections to the color image in Lightroom. The point I am trying to make is that before you convert to B&W, you really need to have the color file looking as good as possible, and that is what often takes the majority of the time.
 

mediumcool

Active member
I imported it into Lightroom and did the following:
a) set the blacks level at 3
b) increased the vibrance to 20
c) added some low (0.7) radius sharpening
d) applied some noise reduction
e) applied a correction for the chromatic aberration

Then I exported it to Silver Efex Pro and did the following:
a) selected the "High Structure" preset
b) applied a green filter
c) added a slight vignette
d) added the gold tone preset (because it's Paris, right?) and decreased the intensity a little
Then I opened it in Photoshop and did the following:
a) added the border
b) applied a slight curves adjustment

The B&W conversion took all of two minutes at most. I spent more time making corrections to the color image in Lightroom. The point I am trying to make is that before you convert to B&W, you really need to have the color file looking as good as possible, and that is what often takes the majority of the time.
Have not used LR or Silver Efex so an interesting tale (and conversion). Thanks for joining in!
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
One thing to note is some images do look better in color; corollary is not all images make great B&W subjects. I think this one does however and I took a slightly different approach than is typical:
 

thomas

New member
It's certainly 3 years ago since I did the last BW conversion… so I took the chance to play around with this image a bit. It's fun after all :)

Some thoughts about the "why" …
- the scene shows a lot of light sources so I thought the image should be a bit "shiny" and not too dark overall as this would be a kind of a discrepancy
- I wanted to maintain the motion of the peaple… so again: too bold blacks make the motion of the walking people almost disappear
- I wanted to accentuate one main point of attention… which is obviously the man in the center of the image (naturally, as it is the only person that is sharp)
(…)

Here's the "how" …
- assigned a Phase One BW profile to the image in Photoshop (in this case the neutral standard BW profile). I do like the 3 Phase One profiles (neutral, panchromatic, yellow filter) as they provide a good starting point. There's also quite a neutral BW profile made by Uli on outbackphoto.com which I also like to use as a starting point. Of course all these profiles are RGB profiles so that you can further fine tune the color chanels.
- slight fine tuning of color chanels (mainly to balance the tree trunks, the facade in the background and the banner in the middle ground)
- curve to balance blacks, midtones and highlights
- slight glow on the highlights (in this case with Focal Blade)
- high pass sharpening layer, overall layer opacity reduced, erased at the edges (so that it is actually only applied to the center of the image… and to the car on the left hand side that is in the same plane of focus as the man in the center)
- layer with grain
- slight warm tone
 

mediumcool

Active member
It's certainly 3 years ago since I did the last BW conversion… so I took the chance to play around with this image a bit. It's fun after all :)

Some thoughts about the "why" …
- the scene shows a lot of light sources so I thought the image should be a bit "shiny" and not too dark overall as this would be a kind of a discrepancy
La Ville-Lumière!
 
T

tokengirl

Guest
It is interesting (but not surprising) how five different people have interpreted this scene in very different ways.
 

sagar

Member
Everyone thank you so much and my apologies for not able to respond earlier. But I have learned so much in this single thread.

I am subscribing to this thread as a reference :)
 
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