[Leica] B&W conversion methods

[Jim Nichols]

Thanks for the kind words, Ken.

Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA

On 5/5/2015 4:32 PM, Ken Carney wrote:
> Very nice!  Obviously SEP is working well for you - beautiful tones.
>
> On 5/5/2015 3:46 PM, Jim Nichols 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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>
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