Getting to BW from a color only camera?

[arlon]

I've been working on duplicating a bunch of old slides and all of the ektachrome slides have lost their color. I took one of them and just turned the color saturation to zero making is basically a BW photo. It looked a lot better than orange. Just curious if there is a better way to get to BW from a camera that does not do BW? My only complaint on the D50 is no BW mode.. Does a D70 do BW? Amazing how good the kodachrome looks after 55 years and how bad the ektachrome looks. Thanks, Arlon

[dsjsws]

Alon,

I can give you a long explanation of how to use Photoshop to convert your photos into black and white or you can just go on the web and type in Photoshop Actions in one of the search engines. They are quite a few b/w actions that are available for free.

Here is a link to one of the pages on this forum where everyone listed their favorite PS actions:

http://www.texasphotoforum.com/forum...ead.php?t=1804


Donna

[Rick Waldroup]

Arlon, I was a B&W film shooter for 30+ years, so when I went completely digital at the beginning of this year, one of the first things I started looking for was a way to get really great B&W from color digital. I've tried all kinds of things but the one thing I found best is a program from a company called The Imaging Factory. It is a plug-in for PS or PS Elements, which is what I have. You can try it for free for 30 days.

It is by far, the best program that I have come across for converting images to B&W. It gives you much more control over contrast and tonal ranges than most anything else out there. You can even dial in a paper contrast and negative value. It really is a great program for this. It is a little expensive, after the 30 days, it is 99.99 for the plug-in, but it is well worth it to me because I convert so much of my stuff to B&W.

I know what you mean about slides. A friend loaned me a film scanner a few months back and my Kodachromes have held up just fine where as some of my E6 stuff is starting to fade or the colors are shifting.

[arlon]

I do not have photoshop and seriously doubt it's worth the cost to me for the handfull of slides I have. Almost fell off the chair when I saw what an older version of photoshop cost.
I liked some of the results of color restoring software (ROC) but it also requires photoshop. Maybe someday but not yet. Arlon

[venchka]

Originally Posted by arlon

...Amazing how good the kodachrome looks after 55 years and how bad the ektachrome looks. Thanks, Arlon

No kidding! Guess which one you can't buy anymore? Go figure. The good stuff always disappears first. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have you downloaded Adobe's Lightroom (FREE!) and tried the built in greyscale conversion? Or used the color channels to desaturate? It's all free!

[srwatters]

Originally Posted by Rick Waldroup

I've tried all kinds of things but the one thing I found best is a program from a company called The Imaging Factory.

I completely concur. There may be other ways of making a more technically perfect B&W from a color digital file, but I'll bet it will take far more time and effort and won't be that much better.

It's called Convert to B&W Pro V3.0.

[KJ Smith]

Originally Posted by arlon

I do not have photoshop and seriously doubt it's worth the cost to me for the handfull of slides I have. Almost fell off the chair when I saw what an older version of photoshop cost.
I liked some of the results of color restoring software (ROC) but it also requires photoshop. Maybe someday but not yet. Arlon

PS Elements is much less expensive, I use V 2.0.
It can be found for under $50, do a search.

[arlon]

Will the other stuff work with PS elements as well?

[Daniel Bates]

You can't use the channel mixer conversion with Elements (or if you can, let me know because I've been looking!). But you can download a 30-day trial version of Photoshop CS2 which will allow you to do most anything out there... (just save up your images and convert lots of them at once, to maximize use of the thirty day trial).

[venchka]

Originally Posted by Daniel Bates

You can't use the channel mixer conversion with Elements..

Sorry. Incorrect terminology. Lightroom Greyscale Mixer

[Rick Waldroup]

All I have is PS Elements 2 and as far as I can tell there is no channel mixer. The software that I mentioned earlier and that Scott left a link for works just fine with Elements. I'm not a big PS guy- I basically just need to be able to do normal post processing but that software from the Imaging Factory is really excellent for B&W conversion. I bet I convert about 80% of everything I shoot to B&W.

[markinvictoria]

Hi Arlon, I have the D50 also and when I want to convert to B&W I just use Nikon View/Editor. It's free and easy from Nikon. It doesn't have the options of PhotoShop but the price is right and the results aren't bad.....Mark

[arlon]

If I could get the ROC photo restore to work in the elements version, that might be the way to go. I saw some examples that where pretty impressive. I just assumed it took cs to work. Guess not. I can afford elements and ROC, so I might give that a go and see what I can get. Thanks for all the ideas. Rick, I'm a BW fan too. Looked at your pbase album, nice BW! Arlon

[venchka]

Perhaps I need to explain myself better.

Adobe has a new product at the beta testing stage of development. It is called Lightroom. It is a free download direct from Adobe. One of the features of Lightroom is a "Greyscale Mixer". The other option within Lightroom is a "Greyscale conversion." I'm not too wild about the Greyscale conversion. I have not tried the Greyscale Mixer. I am shooting C-41 process B&W film directly.

Lightroom also has all the usual exposure, color temperature, color balance, contrast, cropping, etc., etc., etc. features.

Anyway, Lightroom might be worth a try for free. I think it will record all of your processing steps and then apply them to a whole group of images.

Good luck!

[venchka]

Did I mention that Lightroom is FREE?