True black & white conversions?

ConfusedChicca

ConfusedChicca

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Name
Laura
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Yes
Hello all.

For a while now, I've been taking colour images & seeing the potential for an amazing black & white conversion. But when I edit them, 90% of the time I end up with grey tones.
I've played with Curves, Selective Colour, and all sorts of other tools, filters, etc, but I can't get it right.
Am I just selecting the wrong images or is there a trick I'm missing?
 
No Laura, good black and whites are not easy. Each of the elements within them is capable of adjustment and therefore can be wrong.

In LR you can adjust each of the colours independantly and see the effect it is having on the black and white and that is when you see how tricky they can be. As you pull the reds and greens around you can see the density change in the black and white.

I don't have time to do such individual conversions and when I produce a set I need them to be the same in terms of tones so I use actions to convert batches and Silver FX pro for individual images where I don't need consistency.

The actions I use were bought but I'm sure there are also some free ones out there.
 
What a lot of people find with "B+W" is that it lacks contrast, have you tried adding a curve to your shots after converting to B+W? a gentle S shape can work wonders to a flagging B+W shot. Another trick is to try adding some unsharp mask, with a low amount say 30 and a high radius maybe 80+ this bumps up midtone contrast, you will have to experiement with the settings though it does vary from image ti image.
I use silver effects pro for the bulk of my B+W, I prefer the results to photoshops
 
I guess there's a million methods for PP conversions but it's always worth thinking 'black and white' at the time of shooting.

As said - an amazing colour scene such as a rich green landscape with lovely blue sky might equate to exactly the same tone in B&W.

Looking for contrasting scenes suited to B&W is half the battle.
 
Maybe if you post a few pics we can see what your getting, it'll help us to work out what your doing, an original colour and your B+W would give us best ideas.
 
dinners said:
I guess there's a million methods for PP conversions but it's always worth thinking 'black and white' at the time of shooting.

As said - an amazing colour scene such as a rich green landscape with lovely blue sky might equate to exactly the same tone in B&W.

Looking for contrasting scenes suited to B&W is half the battle.
Click to expand...

This is good advice.
If I'm doing work that will end up B&W I shoot raw with monochrome set in picture control.
As I don't use Nikon software to download my images the raw file comes into the computer in colour but having the picture control set to monochrome gives me a B&W preview in the camera so I can get a rough idea as I'm shooting.
 
Channel Mixer, lots of red channel, remove most of the blue and use the green channel to adjust what's left - gives some very Monotoned images that are almost infra red looking - for example this:


becomes this:

 
I use a combination of what the others here have said - curves to ramp up the contrast where needed, and then a channel mixer conversion to B&W.

Although B&W film is my favourite approach ;)
 
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