Hey film guys (and gals)

[iCe]

Can you go here and tell me what, if anything, is wrong with the B&W conversions that I did? I tweaked them to what I think looks good but I want to know what B&W shooters are looking for in a good B&W image. For now it's not about composition...

[stephenpinn]

Michael have you tried Nik Silver eFX Pro 2? I do not use it but have heard many exceptional reviews on the product. I believe you can download a trial

[BRosePhoto]

The main thing I am noticing is the blocking up (loss of detail) in the darker areas. Overall, the sky, the wood in the building, etc. look pretty good but you lose a lot of the depth within the structures because of the heavy dark areas.

Some selective dodging/burning or masking could help as well as playing with the individual curves a bit.

[iCe]

Originally Posted by BRosePhoto

The main thing I am noticing is the blocking up (loss of detail) in the darker areas. Overall, the sky, the wood in the building, etc. look pretty good but you lose a lot of the depth within the structures because of the heavy dark areas.

Some selective dodging/burning or masking could help as well as playing with the individual curves a bit.

Thanks. That's what I was looking for (I should have turned on critique). The Color Effects Filter has a lot of room to play. I used a blue filter tweaked the image from there. It sounds like I over tweaked shadows.

I'm more used to using Photoshop to do the conversions. Maybe I should try CS and see how that works for me.

[BRosePhoto]

I find it helpful to do non-destructive editing in PS to test my filters and do a lot of back and forth comparisons to check subtle changes. Usually this means leaving the background layer in color and then adding an hue/sat adjustment layer with saturation pulled all the way down to get B&W. You can then toggle that layer on and off to check or pick different colors. Then, between the background layer and the h/s adjustment layer I'll add color fill layers or use a photo filter adjustment layer. Again, you can toggle it on/off to see the effect.

Also, remember that in B&W the color filter you choose will generally lighten the gray value of that same color and its complementary color will darken the gray value.

For example, if you look at your first image and choosing a blue filter, you see that the rich blue sky with a clearly defined wisp of white cloud is really flattened out. The gray value of the blue sky is brought up nearer that of the cloud. If you were to use a yellow or amber/orange filter the blue of the sky would get darker and you would see greater separation and definition in the clouds.

You can look online or in photo books for more specifics and examples of other colors. One of the great conveniences of digital is that you can apply the filters in post rather than needing to buy a bunch to put on the front of your lens when shooting. Plus, you can create your own gradients or masked versions with multiple colors.

Forgive the long response, but hopefully it helps.

[iCe]

Long responses are good.

I switched to a yellow filter and tweaked the shadows slider up to restore some of the shadow detail. I hate to over simplify it but it's hard (for me) to know what makes for a good B&W image without actually trying to create one myself

[Coelus]

You'll probably get a better idea of the technical details form a good print than a web image. To me, the whites aren't quite white enough. Mostly looking at that one little cloud. At the same time it looks like a little detail loss in the highlights where the sun is shining through to the planks of the barn. Some dodging and burning is needed like Brett said. You might try playing around with some High Pass filter sharpening too. It adds a nice effect sometimes.

Personally I like Silver Efex for quick initial conversions.

[iCe]

That's a good point. The web does tend to massacre (and mask flaws in) an image. There is a difference in what I see here vs what I see from with the TIF file. I think that I'm going to have to break down and buy a good printer.

I didn't mean to dismiss Silver Efex. I wasn't looking for a software solution. I was looking for parameters.

So far I have:

(1) Good shadow detail
(2) Good highlight detail

Which is two of the things that make a good color photograph...

[Coelus]

The detail is even more important in B&W since the entire image is 'shades of grey'. Also making the whites white and the blacks black. You also have to consider the image itself (not the one you posted in particular) and if it will work well as a monochrome. Some things just make more sense as a color image. With modern digital and raw files you can get a huge tonal range and latitude compared to a lot of films. This give you the ability to shoot in higher contrast conditions, lower light, and faster speeds in some cases. Mix bracketing and HDR in there and you get photographs today that would have been very difficult in the past.

That being said, there's exceptions to every rule.

[BRosePhoto]

So far I have:

(1) Good shadow detail
(2) Good highlight detail

Which is two of the things that make a good color photograph...

Exactly. And, like John said, you have to consider the composition and structure of your subject almost from a "graphic" perspective in terms of shapes, lines, contrast, and forms.

There isn't really much in terms of what makes a good photo in color vs. B&W. In B&W you have to rely on something besides the color for mood, subject separation, etc. but it still comes down to good composition, subject choice, and lighting.

[wclavey]

Michael, it has been a long week but I finally had a chance to take a look at your picture and see what I would do with it in order to make a few suggestions.

First, a caveat: you get what you pay for... LOL! I am no great artist, but I am a B&W person.

Since almost everything I shot in film is B&W and 99% of the digital I process is B&W, I have B&W in mind when I take almost every picture. I try to envision how the scene would look in B&W and shoot it accordingly.I'm working with your image and I may not have shot it exactly that way, but that's what I have.

It has a lot of range, and there is a lot of detail in the shadows that the conversion you did do not seem to bring out... yet you have the problem that if you raise the overall brightness then you will blow out the sections of the boards with the direct sunlight on them.

I am not much of a burn & dodge person - - I prefer to work with techniques that allow me to expand some portions of the brightness scale and see if I can use that and then I will burn or dodge as a last resort, and I use the memory brush for that, not the burn/dodge function.

Most of my B&Ws, regardless of how I convert them, end up as quad-tones or tri-tones, and that is because the tone conversion gives me the chance to open up some sections of the gray scale in ways that are not possible if you stay all gray. I did that with your image. It converted well, but the dark shadows to the right of the door still obscured too much detail.

I then used levels to lighten the midrange quite a bit and then applied some contrast to it... I wanted to see how much contrast I could add before the bright boards started to blow out. Then I went back to levels and added back some darkness to the midrange, just until the point where the shadows started to build again. (All this levels & contrast was done with 2 adjustment layers.)

Finally, I used the Shadow/Highlights command to specifically adjust the contrast of the midrange tones. The is a way to do this adjustment without using this function, but I no longer remember what it is.

Here is my finished version. I have to say that my B&Ws are not as B and W as many peoples' are - - I err on the side of more gray tones than most people do. Some people would probably look at this and say that it needs more contrast or a higher black point.