Conversion to B&W

[iant79]

I was shooting in a marquee yesterday and the weird red light cast by the sun coming through the tent doesn't look nice at at. As a result, I thought I'd convert into b&w but the resulting images just look really flat. Any thoughts as to what might help? I thought maybe upping the contrast and reducing brightness ore-conversion? I'm using GIMP and making basic changes in ZoomBrowser.

Cheers,

Ian.

 

[swanseamale47]

I find a gentle S curve with B+W usually helps, another trick that might work in Gimp is to use unsharp mask but with a low amount and high radius, this gives an effect similar to clarity in LR/PS a sort of midtone contrast boost.

 

[Buck]

Ian

Did you shoot in RAW? If so, you'll be able to adjust the white balance/colour temperature to get rid of the red caste.

 

[iant79]

Thanks for your comments guys. I shoot in jpeg, for my sins. I should really look into making the jump to RAW.

Tried playing around with an s curve - still wasn't happy with b&w conversion, but was able to make the colouring look nicer.