[Leica] B&W conversion methods

[Ken Carney]

In looking over some recent threads on critiques and b&w printing, I 
thought it might be worth while to have some discussion on converting 
files to b&w.  I'll post my approach, and maybe others can suggest 
improvements and describe other approaches.  Here are the files in color 
and as converted to b&W:

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/kcarney/_MG_2525-Edit-Edit-Edit.jpg.html
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/kcarney/_MG_2525BWTX.jpg.html

I opened the file in Nik Silver Efex Pro, but could have used Photoshop 
or Lightroom b&w tools.  I have Nik, Alien Skin, Topaz and DxO packages 
but don't care for them for adjustments.  For example in SEP the tones 
affected by the sliders are pretty broad. Instead, I used Photoshop 
masks as sold by Tony Kuyper (thanks again to Bob Adler).  My camera has 
a range of about six stops, somewhere between slide and negative film, 
or in Zone System terms say Zones 2 through most of 8 as I measured it.  
In this image I thought the brights needed some contrast so I selected a 
Zone 8 mask and used an adjustment curve to pump up the brights a 
little.   There is some spillover, but the curve mainly only affected 
the brights in Zone 8.  Then I did the same thing with masks for Zone 2 
and 3 to get the blacks down to taste.  Finally I added a little grain 
(TriX) with TrueGrain.  This software uses drum-scanned film stock for 
the grain, as opposed to digital interpretations of grain.

So there you have it.  Because of the flexibility of using Photoshop 
targeted masks and adjustment curves, it took about five minutes.

Ken