Black and White - editing images

Mozziephotography

Mozziephotography

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Stephen
Edit My Images
Yes
Anyone recommend a decent "series" of videos on editing images into (?) black and white please? Sorry if that's the wrong way to put it. Not a technical person.
 
Depending on your software either move the saturation slider to 0 or more likely click on the black and white button.

Tricky to get even one video out of that?
 
zendog said:
Depending on your software either move the saturation slider to 0 or more likely click on the black and white button.

Tricky to get even one video out of that?
Click to expand...

Simply de-saturating an image will make for very sucky mono images.

mossienet said:
Anyone recommend a decent "series" of videos on editing images into (?) black and white please? Sorry if that's the wrong way to put it. Not a technical person.
Click to expand...

Mono film is all about tonal control in place of colours, which you can control through the individual colour channels. It's often much easier to use a purpose-made monochrome processing package like Silver Efex or the black and white module of Perfect effects than just to twiddle Lightroom sliders: they usually have presets and starting points that help with a place to work from. There's probably mono presets for Lightrrom too, but LR or DXO doesn't do such a good job with mono images in my hands, even though I'm quite adept with the sliders these days.

Here's a video about mono processing - I've not watched it all the way through, but it does seem focussed on creating better images, rather than just selling their software.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeM1C5pgLNo
 
zendog said:
Depending on your software either move the saturation slider to 0 or more likely click on the black and white button.

Tricky to get even one video out of that?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what to make of this reply. There are numerous videos on you tube on how to get the best out of a b&w image, I was hoping that someone could point me in the right direction in terms of quality.

ancient_mariner said:
Simply de-saturating an image will make for very sucky mono images.



Mono film is all about tonal control in place of colours, which you can control through the individual colour channels. It's often much easier to use a purpose-made monochrome processing package like Silver Efex or the black and white module of Perfect effects than just to twiddle Lightroom sliders: they usually have presets and starting points that help with a place to work from. There's probably mono presets for Lightrrom too, but LR or DXO doesn't do such a good job with mono images in my hands, even though I'm quite adept with the sliders these days.

Here's a video about mono processing - I've not watched it all the way through, but it does seem focussed on creating better images, rather than just selling their software.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeM1C5pgLNo
Click to expand...

Thanks for this, I'll have a look through tomorrow. I appreciate the time taken to reply in detail.
 
I don't know what software you have but take a look at silver effects (photoshop plug in) it's my favorite for B+W.
 
mossienet said:
Lightroom and I did have the Nix collection until my computer was upgraded. The software is £59 now.
Click to expand...
Lightroom does a fair B+W conversion, I usually tend to add a bit contrast to black and white.
A handy tip set your camera to black and white (I tend to set an orange filter), shoot raw and jpeg. Normally you get a B+W jpeg and a colour raw, this gives you options of a colour shot later if you want and you get a rough idea how the shot looks in B+W before you get home.
 
You can still get and use the 'old' Nik plugins collection freely and legally....... a bit harder to find links for them now, as Google etc have take down the links now. I've uploaded them to my OneDrive if you want them.....

Nik Collection for Windows: Nik_Windows

Nik Collection for Mac: Nik_Mac
 
zendog said:
Depending on your software either move the saturation slider to 0 or more likely click on the black and white button.

Tricky to get even one video out of that?
Click to expand...
That's a pretty facile reply. There's a lot more to producing an emotionally satisfying mono image than just clicking to remove the colour.

There are various options, but amongst them you might use either LR (or eqivalent) and PS (or eqivalent), or either alone. Currently I begin in LR and tweak the colour sliders in the mono conversion panel. I might then edit in PS with an adjustment layer and tweaking the 3 colour channels, followed finally but importantly by a curves adjustment layer. I don't know how rational this workflow is - I rarely use PS these days for basic colour work - and for a raw file a non-destructive tone curve is available within LR. But I don't think that anyone needs a plugin like Silver Efex, or that such a plugin really helps.

Mono is a different language to colour, well worth exploring.
 
Stephen I'd just experiment and play around with the software that you've got? Whang those sliders about and see what happens. There are limits with all forms of conversion, unless you want a degraded image. Definitely best to start from raw, though.
 
droj said:
But I don't think that anyone needs a plugin like Silver Efex, or that such a plugin really helps.
Click to expand...

Need? It's an interesting question, but I believe that SE does things that LR cannot (certainly the grain is VERY much more pleasing than that from LR, and control points offer a different localised form of manipulation) at least readily anyway, ditto Perfect Effects B&W module.
 
zendog said:
Just to clarify I took the question to be on converting to B&W. PP'ing the consequent image is naturally a lot more tricky.

No offence meant.
Click to expand...
It does give a really nice result. Yes I can get good results from photoshop, but I prefere the ones from silver effxs. Personal taste.
 
zendog said:
Just to clarify I took the question to be on converting to B&W. PP'ing the consequent image is naturally a lot more tricky.

No offence meant.
Click to expand...

Social media is a pain for understanding the "tone" of someone's comment. No offence taken, it's my lack of clarity in my questions that needs to improve.
 
juggler said:
There are many, many ways of doing it but they all boil down to this:

https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/t...image-for-b-w-conversion.522142/#post-6003226

Presets, Silver Efex and the other plugins do just that and then add a couple of refinements
  • add a contrast curve
  • adjust the local contrast (a bit like the clarity slider)
  • effects like vignette, toning & grain
  • local dodging & burning
That's it.
Click to expand...

A good reminder that David could sometimes add something very positive to the forum.
 
ancient_mariner said:
A good reminder that David could sometimes add something very positive to the forum.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I haven't read the thread. I just picked up on this.

I miss David on this forum very much.

My view on B + W?

If you're serious about it.

Use Tri-X.

If you have to use digital, stay away from what I call Silver Excess. Follow that tutorial.
 
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