[Leica] B&W conversion methods

[Robert Adler]

Hi Ken,
Good job controlling the whites! Definitely can see the improvement.
Included in Tony's curves are videos by another photographer (forgot his
name) on how to use Tony's curves. In one of them he shows a great way to
bring out details in Zone2/3 blacks. I've tried it on a couple of images
and it works very well. May be a good way for you to bring out more detail
in your blacks: at least on screen it looks like its a very sudden drop off
to black.
Best,
Bob
(and congrats on finishing your last tax season!!!)

On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 1:30 PM, Ken Carney <kcarney1 at cox.net> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Bob Adler
www.robertadlerphotography.com