NZDavid Posted September 17, 2011 Share #21 Posted September 17, 2011 Advertisement (gone after registration) Well, that's just plain silly because you have no control of what channels are emphasized or not. B&W film is not monochromatic. Agreed. I usually read this forum for helpful advice instead of being told I am plain silly. I would really have appreciated some further enlightenment on this subject. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted September 17, 2011 Posted September 17, 2011 Hi NZDavid, Take a look here B&W image derived from colour film. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
pop Posted September 17, 2011 Share #22 Posted September 17, 2011 They did not say you were silly. They said that the procedure you outlined was silly. Adan explained it quite well. Another way of explaining would be to say that you perceive different colors not as equally bright, even if their brightness level was exactly the same. It took the B/W film industry an appreciable amount of time to come up with emulsions which delivered naturally looking B/W pictures. B/W photographers used to enhance or manipulate the color sensitivity of their films by using color filters. Just stripping the saturation information from an image would deliver - in most cases - rather bland or lackluster B/W images. Of the two B/W images I posted recently here, I converted both by using just one of the three color channels. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted September 17, 2011 Share #23 Posted September 17, 2011 I usually read this forum for helpful advice instead of being told I am plain silly. I would really have appreciated some further enlightenment on this subject. Here's your advice. B&W film is not responsive to colors as your eyes might see it. This is especially true of earlier emulsions. Monochromatic film is oversensitive to blue, and less responsive to green. Asking a program to simply turn your images into monochromatic presumes that it makes such adjustments for you or it does no such thing so you get blown-out blue skies and extra dark greens. Better now, I hope. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
NZDavid Posted September 17, 2011 Share #24 Posted September 17, 2011 More information is always helpful. "Panchromatic" v orthochromatic B+W film. OK. And filters definitely make a big difference. Something we don't bother about any more -- everything is done in PP. So you are saying shooting real B+W film is definitely better if your goal is B+W images? Years ago, when I still processed B+W, I also found that while you could get B+W prints from color negs, results were unacceptably muddy. In the digital era, I find I can get *acceptable* images by desaturating and maybe boosting or adjusting contrast. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted September 18, 2011 Share #25 Posted September 18, 2011 More information is always helpful. "Panchromatic" v orthochromatic B+W film. OK. And filters definitely make a big difference. Something we don't bother about any more -- everything is done in PP. So you are saying shooting real B+W film is definitely better if your goal is B+W images? Years ago, when I still processed B+W, I also found that while you could get B+W prints from color negs, results were unacceptably muddy. In the digital era, I find I can get *acceptable* images by desaturating and maybe boosting or adjusting contrast. So you are saying shooting real B+W film is definitely better if your goal is B+W images? No. I would not say that. How one prepares his images depends upon how he plans to present them. I suggest that one who wants to present silver prints from film or easily manipulated digital images go here. If you find that simply taking Photoshop's 'desaturated' option is adequate, that is fine. It is your perfect right. It is not rational, IMHO, but your perfect right, Sir. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
250swb Posted September 18, 2011 Share #26 Posted September 18, 2011 I find I can get *acceptable* images by desaturating and maybe boosting or adjusting contrast. If you use Photoshop for instance you can use the 'convert to B&W' option and it provides the option of applying a traditional B&W filter over your colour image as it converts the image to monochrome. So you get the deeper toned blue skies if you apply a yellow filter etc. But other more sophisticated programmes like Silver Efex Pro take the actual colour sensitivity of various films into account and apply that information to a colour image. So you can replicate Panatomic X or Tri X and if that isn't quite right for you even change the colour sensitivity, tone curve and grain to create your own ideal film effect. The other key problem of simply using 'desaturate' and going no further in post processing is that proper B&W photographs are never simply a greyscale image. A traditional print shows the colour of the silver emulsion and the colour of the paper, be it warm tone or cool tone. You can have a warm emulsion and a warm creamy paper, or warm emulsion and a stark white paper etc. This is why books of fine art prints are printed in duotone, or tritone, or quadtone. So if you are going on to print your B&W image on an inkjet printer this colour information (warm, cool, etc) needs to be part of the post processing. And while it is possible to just use greyscale, it is the subtle colours of a traditional B&W print that create a part of the mood in an image. For instance a cold tone portrait creates a different emotional impression compared with a warm toned portrait, a cool landscape against a warm landscape, and so on. Steve Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted September 21, 2011 Share #27 Posted September 21, 2011 Advertisement (gone after registration) If you use Photoshop for instance you can use the 'convert to B&W' option [...] Actually it is Menu 'Image' -> 'Adjustments' -> 'Black & White' that works best. Second best is to 'Photo Filter' or 'Channel Mixer' which I find to be a bit too brutal. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
philipus Posted September 22, 2011 Share #28 Posted September 22, 2011 Actually it is Menu 'Image' -> 'Adjustments' -> 'Black & White' that works best. Second best is to 'Photo Filter' or 'Channel Mixer' which I find to be a bit too brutal. How would you say ACR's black and white conversion compares to these Photoshop tools? Cheers Philip Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
spydrxx Posted September 27, 2011 Share #29 Posted September 27, 2011 If you want a real challenge, shoot in B&W and convert to color. As you can see, it ain't easy. We used to do this in my intro photography course many years ago....shoot the same object in B&W with a dark red filter and then with a dark green or blue filter. Develop the film and project overlapping images....then insert the filters in front of the projection lens and WOW everything pops back to the original colors. It still wows kids in science class demos. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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