[Leica] LR4 cvt to bw

[wtorry at vbar.com (Wayne Torry)]

Lew,

I convert digital to B&W sparingly. As I still shoot a lot of B&W film in 
various formats, digital is my color medium. However, I did purchase an 
inexpensive set of Photoshop Actions and have used these with what I believe 
to be good results. The only drawback I found is that each original RAW file 
requires a trial & error hunt through the whole lot. That is probably due 
entirely to my unfamiliarity with Photoshop & B&W digital conversion. I much 
prefer to get my B&W the correct way. Grinning.
I wouldn't expect Tri-X/Plus-X/HP5/Pan F/Efke/Fomapan/Tmax/etc. results from 
digital. Since I work in both media interchangeably & use all of the 
previously mentioned emusions, I can spot the real silver image in my work 
every time. I'm not saying that it isn't possible to make stunning B&W 
conversions. I have friends who do can do it. As good as they are, they 
don't look like film. Your results may be different.

B&W Actions:

<http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/TLRB&WConversion.htm>

<http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/TLRB&WToning.htm>

Westley Clavey's LUG Gallery. Most of Westley's newest work is digital 
conversion.

<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/wclavey/>

I am not a fan of the presets that ship with Lightroom. Have you tried them? 
They are listed on the left panel in the Develop module.
Good luck! Share your results if you find something you like.

Wayne
 
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Message: 6
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2012 13:54:13 -0400
From: Lew Schwartz <lew1716 at gmail.com>
Subject: [Leica] LR4 cvt to bw
To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
Message-ID:
        <CAFuU78dLZ8sDxM_GZW3C7TWN-xMiKeZm2osdRx6e4tApHEky8Q at 
mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

IMO, in LR4 Development mode, when you convert a color image to bw via
selecting treatment -> black and white, we get the equivalent of
printing a color negative on BW paper, ie not so good. OTOH, further
down the right hand panel, there's an HSL (hue, saturation, luminance)
panel, if we click B&W there, we can, in effect, create the black and
white image we would have gotten if we could have used any
number/combination of filters with black and white film.

I really don't want the filtered bw film look, rather, I'm just trying
to duplicate the tri-x look, the plus-x look, etc ...  I don't want to
buy Silver Efex yet ... so do any of you guys have some diy presets
you'd care to share?


Man! What a lot of words for a simple idea!

-LS