I really liking the way the DP Merrils do B&W. My current workflow is to set the camera on B&W which causes SPP to open with Monochrome, though you can still switch to color mode in SPP. It appears that setting the camera to B&W only affects the LCD display and the default setting in SPP.
When processing in SPP I set the exposure to eliminate any burned out highlights (occasional adding a little fill light). I also set sharpness to -1.5 as it looks like SPP still does some sharpening at the 0 setting. I also tend to set the color wheel to more blue, though this depends on the tones in the image. Then save as 16 bit TIFF and into PS for further processing.
With the above workflow, PS no longer has the color information available and I sometimes I prefer to leave it with the color information in SPP and use the 8 color channel controlls in ACR (HSL) as this gives me more control of the tones of various colors are increased/decreased.
How does this compare to what others are using?
I’ve gotten tired of SPP crashing (MBPr) every 2nd or 3rd time I edit an image. So, I recently bought Iridient Developer (Mac only) which seems to provide a lot more control and I’ve never crashed it. I still have to output to PS as Iridient does not do any local editing (cropping, spotting, dodge/burn…).
There is a menu for Mono. It has a channel mixer, but only for 3 colors, unlike the 8 that you have in PS/ACR in HSL when converted to grayscale. In the ‘In’ tab, there is also an option to select the input profile “Embedded Sigma XDR Monochrome”, which seems to give you the default starting point for BW similar to selecting Monochrome in the SPP menu.
I've Googled for workflow information for BW for Iridient but not found much.
Has anyone experimented with Iridient Developer for B&W images? I'd be interested in your workflow.
Thanks!
When processing in SPP I set the exposure to eliminate any burned out highlights (occasional adding a little fill light). I also set sharpness to -1.5 as it looks like SPP still does some sharpening at the 0 setting. I also tend to set the color wheel to more blue, though this depends on the tones in the image. Then save as 16 bit TIFF and into PS for further processing.
With the above workflow, PS no longer has the color information available and I sometimes I prefer to leave it with the color information in SPP and use the 8 color channel controlls in ACR (HSL) as this gives me more control of the tones of various colors are increased/decreased.
How does this compare to what others are using?
I’ve gotten tired of SPP crashing (MBPr) every 2nd or 3rd time I edit an image. So, I recently bought Iridient Developer (Mac only) which seems to provide a lot more control and I’ve never crashed it. I still have to output to PS as Iridient does not do any local editing (cropping, spotting, dodge/burn…).
There is a menu for Mono. It has a channel mixer, but only for 3 colors, unlike the 8 that you have in PS/ACR in HSL when converted to grayscale. In the ‘In’ tab, there is also an option to select the input profile “Embedded Sigma XDR Monochrome”, which seems to give you the default starting point for BW similar to selecting Monochrome in the SPP menu.
I've Googled for workflow information for BW for Iridient but not found much.
Has anyone experimented with Iridient Developer for B&W images? I'd be interested in your workflow.
Thanks!