Black & white Workflow ! What do you use?

[mh2000]

haven't used LR, but just a basic Channel Mix does everything you need. No reason to stick to presets, better to just get it right to your own eyes instead of trying to mimic discrete filters etc. Stick to mostly R & G channels, bias portraits to the green channel (~70%) and for landscapes bias towards red (~60%)... slide things around till you get it right. I keep 5-10% blue just because I hate throwing away an entire channel of data.

 

[Richard Marks]

I vote for keep it simple and like the smoothness of the Lab Mode method.
Generally slightly increase saturation in the RAW to TIFF file conversion in Capture 1 then convert to lab colour in PS, click on lightness in 'channels' (it should go B and W, then click on Greyscale (discard colur channels=yes) then a bit of contrast altering in curves and your done.

I think the settings for printing is probably as important as anything getting your printer appropriately profiled to print without colour casts set up for the paper that you are using.

Richard

 

[Benjamin Marks]

CS3 has a good conversion tool in the layers menu. I am currently using Alien Skin Exposure 2 and liking the Tri-X and Acros filters. But I also just shot some Neopan 1600 of my brother's wedding . . . I have 40 undeveloped rolls of film at home -- sometimes the backlog can be a bit much. Don't fight digital . . . in fact, don't fight any of these choices. Master all that you can.

Ben Marks

 

[__--]

I'm not concerned about producing "film like" prints but work on each file to get the look I want in that particular print. The idea that film should look like film and digital should look like digital is wholly irrelevant. I find that the B&W I want is most easily accomplished with Silver Efex, which I use with Aperture. Here are two examples:



Wiang Pa Pao | Leica M8.2 | Elmarit-21/ASPH | ISO 320

Bangkok | Leica M8.2 | Summicron-28 | ISO 320

And here's an example of added grain, using Silver Efex, not for the purspose of being film-like but because the large area of the subject's face in the picture was too characterless without grain:


Bangkok | Ricoh GRD2 | 28mm EFOV | ISO 200

—Mitch/Bangkok
Wild Beasts of Botswana

 

[russianRF]

It is still characterless, but now it's characterless and blotchy.