Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/11/04

[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]

Subject: [Leica] Black and White in Photoshop
From: norman.c.aubin at boeing.com (Aubin, Norman C)
Date: Thu Nov 4 11:39:14 2004

Greetings all, 

I've been lurking quietly in the background, and mostly enjoying the 
wonderful work submitted, 
but felt now was time to offer up something.  I see that there is all this 
consternation concerning 
Photoshop, and using black and white or color films, filters, etc.

I thought I'd chirp in with something I have been doing of late that is 
proving most helpful to me.  
I shoot slide film in my M6:  Velvia or Astia usually, but I love K64 also.

I scan the images at 4000 DPI, 4x, with digital ICE, to get nice clean sharp 
files.  

These get leveled and spotted first, then saved as PSD files.  

This is where it gets fun:  Do I want a black and white version or stay in 
color?

If I want to see it in B&W, I also wonder what it would have looked like if 
filtered 
appropriately - ie. should I have used a green filter as Graham does so 
eloquently, or perhaps 
an orange or a red?

I go to the layers/channels/paths window and select the channels window.  
>From there I turn off two of the color channels, to see what the picture 
>would look like 
in B&W shot with that color filter.  In other words, with only red channel 
turned on, it's 
like a B&W shot with a red filter, green only is a like a green filter, etc.

Look at each channel for a while and decide - does the whole image need to 
be in one 
color channel, or should the sky be filtered red, the ground green?

Create a copy layer of the whole image.

If the whole image is to be one filter color, it's very easy to get that - 
you just go to the 
pull down called image/adjustments/channel mixer and select that option.  
When the window 
opens you select the monochrome option in the lower left corner.  

Use the sliders to vary the amount of each color filtering you want for the 
whole image, 
trying to keep the totals for all the numbers at around 100%, more or less 
if you want to push 
the brightness up or down.  By the way, if you slide the red way higher than 
150%, and 
pull the green & blue below 0%, you start creating psuedo-IR effects for 
your image!

Once you've done this, hit OK and the image will be rendered as you see it.  
If you want, 
you can do other manipulations from here, or go straight to print.  If you 
flatten and then 
convert to Grayscale now it will reduce the file size by discarding other 
color data, but it 
will stay in the gray-scale you've put it into.  If you don't convert to 
grayscale, it will be 
available to change later by re-opening the file and re-sliding the scales 
in that layer, or 
even deleting that layer and starting over.

If the image needs to be filtered in parts, ie the sky orange and the ground 
green, 
make a copy layer containing only the part of the image that has to be 
differently filtered.  
Then do the above manipulations for each part.  

Flatten or not depending on whether you want to change later or leave as is.

What this let's me do is find the sharpest, nicest color slide film I can, 
and shoot with that, 
then create a black and white that is almost as long in tonal scale as a 
well processed B&W 
negative, while preserving the color option.  It's cheaper then a second M 
body for the alternative.  
It also eliminates the need for almost all the filters I used to carry for 
B&W shooting.

Hope this helps you by providing some new ideas to play with,

Best of light, 
Norm


Replies: Reply from mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner) ([Leica] Black and White in Photoshop)