hala_b Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 just shifted to digital photography - a lot of my work has always been B&W. can someone pls advise what the best way is to get nice B&W effects with digital. i have been told to shoot in color, always - and then convert it into B&W on photoshop. what are the steps to take in converting color to film like B&W effects? thank you. do i just go to MODE and Greyscale? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed_Ingold Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 Use the Photoshop tool, Channel Mixer, which blends R, G and B channels in various proportions into a monochrome mix. B&W film is about twice as sensitive to blue as to R or G. Merely converting color to greyscale tends to make flesh tones muddy, without the character imparted by the B&S spectral response. The percentages in Channel Mixer should add up to 100. A reasonable starting point for RGB is 25/25/50. Feel free to experiment. You can also buy plugins that emulate the effects of colored filters (red, yellow and green). You could use Channel Mixer, but it's hard to retain a sense of photographic intent and consistency. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
geoffs1 Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 Better than just Mode -> Grayscale is to use the Image -> Adjustments -> Channel Mixer and check the "Grayscale" box at the bottom of the widget. This allows you to control how the Red, Green, and Blue channels are mixed together. I'm sure there are numerous other techniques to generate other B/W effects, but Channel Mixer is the most basic. Cheers, Geoff S. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marshall Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 This is a very oft-discussed topics, and there are a large number of methods. Personally, I also find the Channel Mixer to be the easiest and most powerful method, but there are many others. Also, the new Photoshop (CS3), due out at the end of the month, has a new B&W adjustment layer that is pretty slick. That all said, it IS oft-discussed here, and there are many many tutorials, so a google search would be a good way to start. Then experiment to determine what makes sense to you and what works best to get the results you like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 Short answer - start by throwing out the R and B channels. (Never cared for R&B anyway.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bwcombs Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 Everyone has their methods. (Is this a great country or what!) Pico, I throw out the R channel. I love BG. (Bluegrass) There are also some pretty good plugins that emulate the grain and feel of traditional black and white films. I use TriX plugin from SilverOxide occasionally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sanford Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 I've always like the "Hew/Saturation" control. Desaturate each color one by one and use the darkness/lightness slider to control darkness/lightness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emre Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 Imagenomic Realgrain: http://www.imagenomic.com/rg.aspx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark_schafer1 Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 I also recommned looking at Adobe Lightroom. In the grayscale settings is a point and click channel mixer(top left). You click on the blue sky, drag the curser down (for darkening) and Lightroom automaticly pics the blue slider and darkens it, it's genius! cheers M Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul_sokal___dallas__tx Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 The B&W adjustment layer in the soon to be released PS CS3 will be the end-all for B&W conversion. You may still be able to download the beta version to try it. O/W wait a couple of weeks for the offical release. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cabophoto Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 I just started using Lightroom and also discovered the featurethe Mark mentioned. It's very cool ! Definitely worth trying. Carsten Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
geoff_foale Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 If you search the archieves you will be overwhelmed by advice on different methods. Channel Mixer is certainly one of the best. It allows you plently of creative input and isn't too difficult to get good results. I usually use a method which I learnt on Photonet (from Beau Hooker). Basically, starting from your background image, Add a Hue & Saturation Adjustment Layer then a Curves Adjustment Layer but do not adjust them yet. Finally a Channel Mixer Adjustment Layer. Select Monochrome and adjust as others have advised. Go to the Curves Layer and adjust to suit (an S type curve often works). Then take the Hue & Saturation Layer and move the Hue slider until you get something you like. Try moving left and right, sometimes it takes a lot of adjustment and sometimes little or nothing is required. As far as Channel Mixer settings are concerned, I usually view each channel seperately at 100 to discover which is best to use as the dominant colour. Blue can give a lot of noise and red can be good for skin colour. As a starting point I tend to use 60-30-10 or 30-60-10 but as each photo is unique there is no magic formula. A little while ago Patrick Lavoie gave receipes for emulating black and white film. I can't find the link now - but it's somewhere in the archieve files. Perhaps somebody else knows where. Hope I've helped a little. Geoff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mendel_leisk Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 Anyone know what Photoshop's convert to greyscale option does? Just curious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roger_kallet Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 Mendel, PS default conversion, Image>Mode>Grayscale uses these proportions: Red 30%, Green 59% and Blue 11% for the conversion. --Roger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roger_kallet Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 Hala, Take a look at these for starters... http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/or/black-and-white.html http://www.eyesondesign.net/pshop/bw/converting_to_bw.htm http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/BlackWhiteVariationsSM.mov --Roger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roger_kallet Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 Geoff, Perhaps this is what you're looking for... http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00DrC6 --Roger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arash khoshghadam Posted March 7, 2007 Share Posted March 7, 2007 My approach to Black and White production in channel mixer is somewhat a bit unconventional but it works: I don't touch Monochromatic. Instead, I play with the sliders to eventually get the nicest color rendition; then, I click Monochromatic and the produced black and white is always satisfactory this way. I also keep a close watch on the histogram all the time not to let the highlights over exposed. Since image sensors are more sensitive to green color than the other two ( and in actuality there are more green-filtered photosites ), the green slider is always the one I manipulate most. My experience shows red slider should be somewhere around 20-30% with minimum manipulation of blue; of course, this depends heavily on the image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_redmann Posted March 8, 2007 Share Posted March 8, 2007 <I>Short answer - start by throwing out the R and B channels.</I><P> Please do not listen to such nonsense. The net effect on your picture is like putting a green filter on your lens. Not too many experienced B&W photographers think a green filter is the right answer for all occasions.<P> As others have said, tweaking the mix of the red, green, and blue channels (relative contribution of each) before going gray is <I>one</I> good technique. There are others. You can even adjust each channel individually with levels or curves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitestone Posted March 8, 2007 Share Posted March 8, 2007 I have collected summaries of various methods of BW conversion and posted them here: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgsc3vch_1dcr57q -Rob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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