[Leica] B&W conversion methods

[CJ andS]

Difficult scene for a B&W conversion. The black adjustment removed most
detail in people pants and shirts creating walking specters. Looking at the
color I don't see that there are too many blacks anyway except small
sections of the lamp post or the back struts of the bench for example.  A
more subtile conversion without taking personal tastes or artistic
endeavors into consideration should show tonal difference between the back
of the bench by the persons behind and the diagonal strut underneath.  I'm
only imagining that is possible but in a darkroom situation I would be
trying to get that sort of distinction from the tones.

On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 4:46 PM, Jim Nichols <jhnichols at lighttube.net> wrote:

> Ken,
>
> Nice job, but you are doing a much more sophisticated job than what I am
> attempting.  I have abandoned Adobe, so the plug-in approach doesn't work
> for me.  I open a RAW image in Picture Window Pro, make adjustments and end
> up with a reduced-size TIFF file.  I take these to Focus Magic and/or Neat
> Image, as need be, saving the image as a TIFF or JPEG as the mood suits
> me.  I then take that to Silver Efex Pro 2 and use its tools to change to
> B&W.
>
> Recent image:  Original TIFF
> http://www.gallery.leica-users.org/v/OldNick/P5054571.tif.html
>
> Final Converted Image:
> http://www.gallery.leica-users.org/v/OldNick/More+Rhody+Blooms.JPG.html
>
> Jim Nichols
> Tullahoma, TN USA
>
>
> On 5/5/2015 3:30 PM, Ken Carney 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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>>
>>
>
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-- 
Chris Saganich
www.imagebrooklyn.com