Critique Suffolk in monochrome

juggler

juggler

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Simon
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Right, having just bought Silver Efex Pro it's inevitable that I'm going to overprocess everything. I'm still not convinced about making digital shots look like film but here's a selection of somewhat uninteresting shots from the East coast. Feedback very welcome, especially on the processing.

1. Walberswick beach (mono) - highlights too dark?


2. Walberswick beach (desaturated) - is the little bit of colour better?


3. Grainy waves - is the water too dark? Does the grain add anything?


4. Windy. Skin too dark? Toning a bit much?


5. Beach huts. There's been quite a few comments here lately about how beach huts are all about the colour but these are the huts I know best.
 
I think with some of these that when you come out of SilverEfex and back into PS you might benefit from checking the levels, seems that the r/h slider wants pulling in to pick those whites up, always needs checking.

As regards the colour, I don't think the processing on the second image works. Keep it B&W, at least until you are fully familiar with the programme. When you apply toning I recommend that instead of going for the sepia preset you simply take the silver toning slider up to say 20 or 25, but keep the paper toning slider at between 0 and 3, gives the same sepia tone but holds the whites better. Worth experimenting.

I personally always apply grain, but I like to emulate film, don't particularly care for the very smooth textures of digital, an entirely personal thing
 
horrocks said:
I think with some of these that when you come out of SilverEfex and back into PS you might benefit from checking the levels, seems that the r/h slider wants pulling in to pick those whites up, always needs checking.
Click to expand...

You're absolutely right; it hadn't occurred to me to check. I suppose an alternative would be keeping a closer eye on the histogram in SilverEfex.

As regards the colour, I don't think the processing on the second image works. Keep it B&W, at least until you are fully familiar with the programme.
Click to expand...
Agreed, a failed attempt to tone different areas of the image separately.

When you apply toning I recommend that instead of going for the sepia preset you simply take the silver toning slider up to say 20 or 25, but keep the paper toning slider at between 0 and 3, gives the same sepia tone but holds the whites better. Worth experimenting.
Click to expand...

Thank you - that's exactly the conclusion I'd been coming to.

I personally always apply grain, but I like to emulate film, don't particularly care for the very smooth textures of digital, an entirely personal thing
Click to expand...

I think that there is something to be gained from grain I'm currently having trouble working out when grain becomes noise.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.
 
And after a quick lunchtime re-edit... the tweaks are on the cautious side but my work monitor is rubbish for editing.
I think I've lost too much information during the conversion of the beach huts to simply play with levels and may have to run it through SEP again. The same may be true of the long beach shot.

(btw, I do hope they're planning to implement a way of re-editing previous conversions).

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Punchier.

On the grain/noise question, most people seem to think that digital grain is noise, and can get very funny about it!

The grain engine in Nik software is actually designed to carefully emulate the grain in silver film, I don't think you need to worry too much about it looking like noise. You will find that the grain is far anyway less visible in print than it is on the screen, and you sometimes need to apply more than you think if you want it to be seen!
 
horrocks said:
Punchier.

On the grain/noise question, most people seem to think that digital grain is noise, and can get very funny about it!

The grain engine in Nik software is actually designed to carefully emulate the grain in silver film, I don't think you need to worry too much about it looking like noise. You will find that the grain is far anyway less visible in print than it is on the screen, and you sometimes need to apply more than you think if you want it to be seen!
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's very helpful and timely as I'm currently trying to get my head around the different sharpening strategies required for print rather than display.
 
Simon, if you are intending to print, I recommend this programme, not too expensive, and it very effectively looks after the sharpening for print (as opposed to selective sharpening within image processing, a different thing) side of things.

http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/index.html

You can download a trial.
 
No, I haven't compared. Qimage is based around a RIP, it is possibly not as good or intuitive to use as Imageprint for example, but it is a tenth of the price!

It automatically sharpens (though you can override it manually) to your chosen print size, and you can save and store jobs within the programme, so every time you make a new print at a given size it is absolutely consistent with the last. It is a bit fiddly to use at first, but once you have it nailed it is superb.

I use Nik Sharpener within my B&W workflow as one of several tools to build richness and tonal depth, but I don't use it to sharpen either for web or print - for the former I use Alex Nail's resizing and sharpening process, though I pull back or remove completely the hard sharpen layer.

http://www.alexnail.com/blog/tutorials/resize-and-sharpen-for-web/

I believe Alex is a member of this forum.
 
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