M8 and B&W

[MP Guy]

I took a bunch of my pictures and converted them to B&W with PS. Please prvide your thoughts on them ....

http://www.flickr.com/photos/torralba/sets/72157594458059290/

Thanks

 

[paulhart]

Nice shots. What were those with the very shallow DOF taken with?

 

[J. Borger]

Some realy nce shots in there Jorge.
Especially like the portraits of your kids, and to be more specific the picture of your daughter in the strong light (monalisabw).

 

[ruben]

Hi Jorge,
Of course the technicalities are the last think I look after when I see pics, unless serious shortcommings jump to my eyes. So I specially like the Monalisa and the wooden wheels pics. If the monalise is your daughter, I concede you my acquittal for any amount of money you have invested in gear (although gear is not what made this pict - what the hell !).

If the look at the computer screen is what you were asking about, well I am seeing your pics from my LCD screened computer at work, and I have noticed that LCD sceens highly improve the looking of BW images. From this situation, yours look perfect.

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[Nachkebia]

You need to control white tone, all the digital files need to be white tone manipulated well at least for monitor

 

[iml]

I like the portraits of what I guess are your children, very nicely done.

Ian

 

[jaapv]

I like them Jorge. What B&W conversion did you use?

 

[MP Guy]

Jaapv,

I just used PS gray scale conversion. I think I need to adjust my monitor since it looks so different on other monitors. I just bought a Gateway monitor and today is the last day I have for returning it. I may actually do so and upgrade to a better monitor.

 

[Ara Ghajanian]

Jaapv,

I just used PS gray scale conversion. I think I need to adjust my monitor since it looks so different on other monitors. I just bought a Gateway monitor and today is the last day I have for returning it. I may actually do so and upgrade to a better monitor.

You should really use the Channel Mixer adjustment layer in PS. It will give you so much more control that you'll wonder what you did without it.
Ara

 

[jaapv]

What I do: Create a levels layer, create a gradient layer and adjust the levels in the colour channels in the levels layer and flatten and only then remove colour information. Works in Elements as well. I think the standard PS conversion is rather flat without much control. But I may be wrong, your shots seem to prove that.

 

[Topdog1]

I very much liked the MonaLisa, Wheels, and snow trio. The snow trio seemed to have too many unifrom grey tones, so could have used some more interesting light to brighten it up and add contrast.

Regards,
Ira

 

[MP Guy]

All those adjustment are too technical for me. I need a lesson or a step by step instruction cheat sheet.

 

[Topdog1]

All those adjustment are too technical for me. I need a lesson or a step by step instruction cheat sheet.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds these descriptions mystifying. I have no idea what people are talking about when they suggest making a B&W in PS that way.

/Ira

 

[ruben]

All those adjustment are too technical for me. I need a lesson or a step by step instruction cheat sheet.

Are you sure you must them ?

 

[rsl]

Jorge, I've made a lot of grayscale conversions from color over the past several years, using straight grayscale, desaturating (which is the same thing), converting to Lab and using the L, lightness channel, using the luminance mask, using channel mixer (very flexible), and using calculations (even more flexiible). But the best methods I've found are the black and white conversion filters in Nik color efex pro. If I can figure out how to attach a couple of pictures to this post you can see for yourself.

 

[Robert]

Jorge, your photos are nice, some of the black and white look better than the colour originals.
The photos show some nice tones.
I tend to please myself and if I like the way I produce a print I don't care if someone says I would have been better doing it this way or the other.

 

[mwooten]

All those adjustment are too technical for me. I need a lesson or a step by step instruction cheat sheet.

Jorge,
While I use Adobe's Lightroom for my b&w conversion, here is a link to a quicktime movie about using a couple of adjustment layers to convert color to b&w that you might like;
http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/ColortoBW.mov
The neatist thing about using adjustment layers in photoshop is that nothing is final until, and if, you flatten the file.
There are a bunch of methods to convert color to b&w, and everyone seems to have their favorite.

Take care,
Michael

 

[cnguyen]

Good pics , Jorge ! Just got my M8 tonight. Battery is charging.🙂

 

[marco_rol]

Jorge,

Those are really nice. Here's (yet another) step-by-step tutorial that I have found helpful for B&W conversion in PS that provides nice results.

http://www.journalofaphotographer.com/workflow_tutorials/tutorial_converting_color_images_to_black_and_white.php

Marco

 

[andersju]

And here's yet another tutorial. I've tried the one linked above, but this technique is much simpler (just channel mixer+contrast curve - make an action of it) and I find the results more pleasing:

http://www.markushartel.com/tutorials/archives/2006/08/color_to_bw_con.html

The author also has a page with channel mixer settings simulating various films (Tri-X, T-Max, Delta, HP5, etc.):

http://www.markushartel.com/tutorials/archives/2006/11/channel_mixer_s_1.html