typhillips
Established
The previous posts have the different film stocks, filters, etc. all covered so I thought I'd delve into the processing side of things a little more.
In my opinion, there are two glaring problems with the majority of "beginner" B&W images I see posted online. By "beginner", I mean someone who is new to the scanning/processing/resizing for web type of workflow, not necessarily a beginner photog. I should also clarify that I am speaking strictly about images originating from scanned B&W film, not scans of silver prints or digital captures (if I were discussing digital I'd have to add a couple of other items to this list).
1. Lack of local contrast (the key word being local)
2. Lack of sharpness, or conversely lack of "natural looking" sharpness
Both of these afflictions, of which my own online work suffered from when I was new to this type of workflow, have nothing to do with producing the negative itself and everything to do with what happens after that point.
The contrast issue is simple: It is rare that I produce a negative that requires only a simple levels/curves adjustment after scanning to achieve what I would call the proper "B&W look" (for lack of a better term). All of my images undergo digital dodging and burning, just as a skilled printer would do in the traditional darkroom. This is easily achieved by the use of duplicate layers, the Threshold tool used in conjunction with the Gaussian Blur filter and layer specific levels adjustments. There are various online tutorials on some of the different techniques to do this. Unless the scene you photographed is pure mid tones, without any deep shadows or bright highlights, this dodging and burning is required or else you will run into one of two issues: loss of data (in the form of blocked shadows and blown highlights) or a very muddy look to the mid tones.
The second problem, lack of sharpness, is partially related the first. In other words, local contrast adds perceived sharpness to an image. But mostly I am referring to the lack of care that many people take with how they sharpen and resize their images. Some of the other posters have already mentioned the abuse of the unsharp mask tool - it is easy to overdo it and make things look unnatural. But with the correct settings you can compensate for the loss in sharpness due to scanning (especially with a flatbed) without making the final image look brittle ("brittle".... I like it .... that is a good term for it).
For resizing, make sure to use a bi-cubic or sinc interpolation setting. If you do a straight linear interpolation resize you will lose substantial sharpness. I typically do a very slight unsharp mask after resize, just to give it a tiny bit of snap. Definitely make sure this is extremely subtle though.
On the subject of scanning, I recommend scanning B&W negatives as an "image" rather than a B&W negative and then inverting in your image processing software. Check the histogram in your scanning software to make sure you aren't missing some highlight or shadow detail because of a wacky exposure setting in the scanner software.
Hope this helps and good luck!
In my opinion, there are two glaring problems with the majority of "beginner" B&W images I see posted online. By "beginner", I mean someone who is new to the scanning/processing/resizing for web type of workflow, not necessarily a beginner photog. I should also clarify that I am speaking strictly about images originating from scanned B&W film, not scans of silver prints or digital captures (if I were discussing digital I'd have to add a couple of other items to this list).
1. Lack of local contrast (the key word being local)
2. Lack of sharpness, or conversely lack of "natural looking" sharpness
Both of these afflictions, of which my own online work suffered from when I was new to this type of workflow, have nothing to do with producing the negative itself and everything to do with what happens after that point.
The contrast issue is simple: It is rare that I produce a negative that requires only a simple levels/curves adjustment after scanning to achieve what I would call the proper "B&W look" (for lack of a better term). All of my images undergo digital dodging and burning, just as a skilled printer would do in the traditional darkroom. This is easily achieved by the use of duplicate layers, the Threshold tool used in conjunction with the Gaussian Blur filter and layer specific levels adjustments. There are various online tutorials on some of the different techniques to do this. Unless the scene you photographed is pure mid tones, without any deep shadows or bright highlights, this dodging and burning is required or else you will run into one of two issues: loss of data (in the form of blocked shadows and blown highlights) or a very muddy look to the mid tones.
The second problem, lack of sharpness, is partially related the first. In other words, local contrast adds perceived sharpness to an image. But mostly I am referring to the lack of care that many people take with how they sharpen and resize their images. Some of the other posters have already mentioned the abuse of the unsharp mask tool - it is easy to overdo it and make things look unnatural. But with the correct settings you can compensate for the loss in sharpness due to scanning (especially with a flatbed) without making the final image look brittle ("brittle".... I like it .... that is a good term for it).
For resizing, make sure to use a bi-cubic or sinc interpolation setting. If you do a straight linear interpolation resize you will lose substantial sharpness. I typically do a very slight unsharp mask after resize, just to give it a tiny bit of snap. Definitely make sure this is extremely subtle though.
On the subject of scanning, I recommend scanning B&W negatives as an "image" rather than a B&W negative and then inverting in your image processing software. Check the histogram in your scanning software to make sure you aren't missing some highlight or shadow detail because of a wacky exposure setting in the scanner software.
Hope this helps and good luck!
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