Case Study: Conversions to Black & White |
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wattsbw2004 ![]() Groupie ![]() Joined: 09 May 2008 Location: United States Status: Offline Posts: 116 |
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What about using the calculations technique that Scott Kelby talks about in his Photoshop CS3 for photographers book. Thas also one worth mentioning because it creates some dramatic B&W images.
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Micholand ![]() Admin Group ![]() Knowledgebase Contributor Joined: 30 October 2005 Country: Germany Location: MUC Status: Offline Posts: 19214 |
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You're absolutely right, besides the described "basic" ways there is another special method to convert a colour photo to black and white which is using "Calculations" in Photoshop. It's quite similar to the channel mixer, but it does have it's own individual style of desaturating things. I disregarded it though as it's somehow an advanced method and also Photoshop specific, but it's certainly worth mentioning. In short: The Calculations Method allows you to combine two colour channels of your image into a black and white image. The Calculations dialogue lets you choose which channels to combine - the red, green, blue and grey channel - and how to combine these two by the use of different blending modes and amount of opacity. There isn't a lot of "how-to" information about using Calculations, however I was happy to find this very good online tutorial "The Calculations Method - Photoshop Tutorials" that walks through the process in detail and with good explanation. Edited by Micholand - 18 May 2008 at 18:13 |
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Micholand ![]() Admin Group ![]() Knowledgebase Contributor Joined: 30 October 2005 Country: Germany Location: MUC Status: Offline Posts: 19214 |
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Seems as the Calculations tutorial posted above is meanwhile down
![]() But I recently found another one ![]()
Edited by Micholand - 30 May 2013 at 08:16 |
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alpha_in_exile ![]() Senior Member ![]() Joined: 26 September 2007 Country: United States Location: United States Status: Offline Posts: 3212 |
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GIMP users will find this tutorial useful, though the menus of the current GIMP version have changed slightly from those of the version that was out when the tutorial was written.
Specifically, all of the functions were moved from the "Image" menu to the "Colors" menu. The linked tutorial covers greyscale conversion, desaturation, decomposing, and channel mixing. |
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-- Matt
A7RM4, Min 24/2.8, Min 50/1.4, FE 24/1.4 GM, FE 50/1.2 GM, FE 135/1.8 GM, FE 70-200/2.8 GM II my web gallery |
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romke ![]() Senior Member ![]() Knowledge Base Contributor Joined: 03 September 2009 Country: Netherlands Location: Putte Status: Offline Posts: 3138 |
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Those who use Lr could perhaps find the following useful.
If having a color image open either in "Library" or in "Development" pressing the "V" key on the keyboard toggles between color and B&W. it thus gives a immediate view of what it could look like. the image is rendered in the basic B&W treatment, so it may need (quite) a bit of adjustment, but it is a easy way to screen a number of images fast on their suitability for conversion to B&W. When converting color images to B&W in Lr there are various ways to do it. The most attractive way is to go to the "Color Adjustments Panel" and then reduce the saturation to -100 for all the 8 channels/colors. That is a bit of work, but it can be set to a preset ![]() The nice thing about using the "Color Adjustment Panel" to reduce the saturation (in comparison to doing it in the "basic" panel) is that all the color adjustment possibilities still are available. You thus can for example change the luminance of individual colors to change the look of the image dramatically. this gives you far more control over the end result then other methods in Lr. |
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EddyH ![]() Senior Member ![]() Joined: 22 August 2010 Country: Belgium Location: Antwerp Status: Offline Posts: 441 |
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Nice post! I work in the printing industry and I know that people are struggling with B/W conversions...
But myself, I'm a bit lazy... ![]() Of course there are also other tools, which will simulate the properties of old B/W films. If you like B/W they're really worth while to test. |
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2 eyes | 2 slices of silicon | a few kilos of glass | my photo blog
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