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Black & White from Colour Files
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Hi folks,
Wondering what you use to convert your colour files to black and white. I’ve recently trialled some of the b&w plugins out there, using them through lightroom, and found they have produced some nice results, much more pleasing to me than I would have managed myself in lightroom or any other general image editing programs.
The one I liked most, results-wise and workflow-wise was Silver Efex Pro, which seems to have a nicely put together feel, more than just being an expensive container for a bunch of adjustable filters. My only quibble is that it seems more geared for processing single images at a time, or rather that coverting a batch of images is no more time efficient than editing the same images individually. Would be quite nice if it had a much more efficient batch processing functionality, but for now it is quite nice.
I think ultimately I would love if Adobe decided to license the Nik Silver Efex software, and integrate it into Lightroom, but given how system intensive the Nik software seems to be (read: slow’ish), I wonder if that could ever be an option or would it upset the Lightroom architecture too much.
May also have a look at Alien Exposure which has a number of film-like filters, but it seems quite pricey. DXO filmpack seems like another option, more reasonably priced too, so may trial that, and see if I like it any more than Silver Efex.
Black & white and colour film-filter conversion software seems to be more prevalent these days, so wonder what people are using for their own black and white conversions..
I’ve never tried any of those programs! usually, if the image suits, i convert to B+W as part of RAW processing in photoshop by de-saturating and use color temperature sliders to play with the contrast as it negates the need for filters when shooting. i used to use the channel mixer but gave that up as it loses too much information and sometimes prints a bit weird
i never batch process anything as i find each image wants slightly different treatment…Forgot about being able to desaturate and then play around with the colour temperature sliders, must give that a whirl again. Re: the batch processing, can see how the main conversion you might not want to just simply batch, but I find there are some things like nice black and white borders, and simple vignetting in Silver Efex I have no problem adding to all the images.
In any case, still playing around with Silver Efex and must say I like it a lot. Don’t really do too much, just simply select a film profile that suits the shot, add some light vignetting from one of the menus, and then round off by adding a nice wet darkroom-type white border. Must say I am impressed with how non-digital the images come out the other end, and am very impressed overall. Would be nice to be able to do colour film filters in the same program, to take the digital look off my colour images too.
Will try get it together to post up some images I’ve processed in Silver Efex. Just really playing around, thus far though..
A good B&W conversion technique is the holy grail as far as I am concerned. I have tried numerous methods and was never really satisfied with any of them. My father had converted the attic to a darkroom when I was a kid and I used to do all my own B&W stuff up there and nothing in the digital world came close.
Then one night in the camera club we had Guy Gowan out and he showed us a technique he uses where he used the channels. I used that for a long time and was happy with the results although it was labour intensive.
Recently I have started using Silver Efex and I find the results out of this are very good and its quite quick. I had always wondered why no one had suggested a conversion technique in Camera RAW but I am going to give this a go.
Mark S.
I will definitely be trying Silver Efex. Until now I’ve enjoyed using calculations. Multiplying different colours with each other and then using blending modes with the different results can throw out some incredible images but is far too time consuming. I might be alone in this but I recently started shooting in black in white on camera instead of converting at a later stage. I’ve come to the conclusion that I shoot completely differently this way as compared to shooting for conversion later. You automatically push for contrast and start thinking in whole shapes instead of areas of colour. Give it a try.
Interesting. If shooting solely for black & white, even just shooting in raw and having the black and white profile turned on, so you can see your results on the lcd would be helpful I imagine. Still, I can imagine the mentality of shooting solely for black and white, and not just colour and a possible conversion later, makes a big difference to your approach and results. I’ve experimented a little with black and white straight from the camera, but have never felt satisfied, or rather to get an image that was either not too flat or didn’t have the shadows blocked up. May give it another shot, when I work up the will to lug my dslr about though, as at the moment the D300 stays at home.
Everything is still open for me at the moment, myself, and have found myself stubbornly returning to Lightroom an exploring conversion options, to see if I can get it to give me results I want. Those borders from Silver Efex though, sure are nice, and would be nice if Lighroom included some sort of post-crop border option, in a similar vein to post-crop vignettes.
I like Silver Efex, but having no flexibility to change, see or duplicate the options I have taken to get an image where it is, irritates me a little, and is partly responsible for sending me back to Lightroom to re-explore converting there. That, the additional Tiff files generated by a round trip to Silver Efex, and the slow batch processing keep me returning to Lightroom. I guess I am stubborn to master the b&w options there, and keep everything under the Lightroom roof.
For what its worth there’s a simple black and white mapping software out there called True Grain which I came across, which might be just the ticket for those like me happy to apply a uniform look to all their conversions. Results seem nice, and they have an easy batch processing option too, but have yet to make my mind up on whether I want to drop additional dollars on b&w conversion software..
Em I just use the B+W layer in Photoshop :) I also switch to RAW B+W mode in camera too which I find useful
for visualising.
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