D-Lux 3/GR-D and raw developer schizophrenia

[malland]

Belos is a posting I made on my flickr site in repsonse to some one who asked how I got the B&W tonalities in my D-Lux 3 and Ricoh GR-D pictures, which can be seen at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/

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To get the tonality in B&W I generally convert RAW files: I've been using Lightroom, but I have also used Raw Developer, Photoshop (ACR), and in the last few weeks I've been trying SILKYPIX. Incidentally, for color, my conclusion is that SILKYPIX often gives the best resullts with the least effort, as in the picture above, which, incidentally, was shot with the Leica D-Lux 3. However, for the color picture from Congo, the one with people in the mine site office, I found that the hightights in the back of the long room came out the best using Photoshop/ACR. But obviously I cannot keep on trying various raw developers on the same picture and I'll have to settle on one, because I find I cannot predict which one will work the best on which type of picture.

Coming back to B&W, my conclusion is that the raw developer does not matter that much: the work flows have been to convert the pictures to B&W in Lighroom or to do so in Raw Developer (a Mac only program) that has a good B&W conversion or to develop the RAW file in SILKYPIX and convert to B&W using ConvertToB&WPro in Photoshop, and finally, to develop the file in Lightzone and convert to B&W in Lightzone or in ConvertToB&WPro in Photoshop. Again, I'll have to choose on of these raw converters but haven't yet decided which one. I'm leaning to SILKYPIX because it does render files very well, has a myriad of subtle adjustment possibilities, yet has an excellent set of defaults so that it canj be used simply — and it has excellent sharpening and noise removal tools. Perhaps the other choise would be ACR in Photoshop, which I understand is the same as Lightrooom.

But the key steps in getting the B&W look that I want — and please note that I lusually ike higher contrast then most people — is in the use of Lightzone followed by some adjustments in Photoshop. In Lightzone I basically so two things: use the Tone Mapper, which helps in shadow and highlight detail and also to use ZoneMapper to change contrast. In a typical file I may use 2-3 ToneMapper adjustments and 3-5 ZoneMapper adjustments: sometime I make these adjustment using the Multiple or Hard Light blending mode and pulling back the percentage opacity. It's all by trial and error. I also use Lightzone's vector selection facility to select areas to dodge and burn: I find this much easier than using Photoshop selections.

When I get the tonality that I want I take the file into Photoshop and, most of the time, apply Unsharp Mask at 20/50/0 to increase midtone contrast significantly, which also heightens the grain; while this step can also be done in Lightzone I don't know what numbers to punch into Lightzone Unsharp Mask tool, which does not have the same scale as Photoshop. However, the Unsharp Mask increases highlights and compresses shadows somewhat, which for some pictures is excessive: for these I add a Photoshop curve to darken the top end of the highlights and lighten the deep end of the shadows. Or I may add a final curve to fine tune the tonalities.
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Sorry to be so longwinded, but the purpose of this posting is to get some reactions on the selection of raw developers, a question on which I'm somewhat schizophreinic now.

—Mitch/Bangkok

[stnami]

Hi Mitch
With the new CS3 ConvertToB&WPro has become redundant with its new B&W convertor. The raw developer of CS3 is the same as Lightroom now, looks different but gives the same results
Raw Developer is great for B&W, the ability to use of LAB colour curves in raw, something that Adobe should consider. This helps to reduce the need for Unsharp Mask later as LAB has the capacity to increase highlights and compress shadow areas lumoniousity.
By the time I get to LightZone works with Lightroom and Aperture, I probably made too many errors with the camera........
Looks like you are getting a handle on that pocketfullofnoise-daluxie 3. some interesting results

[macgarvin]

Hello Mitch

Fine art books use duotones to quadtones to reproduce the tonality of eg platinum or selinium prints. Folk who don't know about this already might be interested in playing around with this in photoshop as a final stage? Here is an example of the principle (though colours shift in converting it back to sRGB for here). Having done the processing you already do then convert first to greyscale 8 bit, and then to pantone, and select quadtone.

Quadtone example.jpg

I've also attached via the link below the quadtone plug-in that I created for this - the four colours used to make it may come as a surprise when you open up the duotone/quadtone dialogue. TO use it, first you will need to change the .txt extension here back to .ado, and in Photoshop CS2 it lives in the following folder >Presets>Duotones. But essentially you just have to remember where it is on your computer so that you can access it via the 'Load' button in the quadtone dialogue

Best, Malcolm

Malcolm#2quad.txt

edit BTW - the photo is from the Craven limestone of the Yorkshire Dales in December - I got blocked in my journey home by once-in-a-long-while floods, so instead got out the camera and recorded what was around - pretty amazing as it happened, but all shot with a 5D so not appropriate for this forum!

[stnami]

.. just make sure your blacks are black and it does tend to flatten the tones so a curves tweek is suggested. Beats all those pseudo sepia etc methods

[Peter41951]

Many thanks indeed! I've tried out your quadtone process and the result is excellent!

[newyorkone]

I just got a D-Lux 3 so thanks for the tips. This will be very helpful.