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First attempt at BW conversion
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Any comments appreciated ,I tried to get it looking like a used BW print ….. ,not sure though.
_brian_ wrote:
I tried to get it looking like a used BW print ….. ,
Used on what? Sorry, couldn’t resist. I know exactly what you mean!
For what it’s worth, I think you need to do a little more work on the sky, as it’s far too bright and dominates the image. At the same time, I’d open up some of the shadow areas in the building itself. The eye will always be attracted to areas of brightness, so you need to be careful how you use them (the bright areas, that is!). I think there’s a little too much green in the toning as well. Overall though, it does have potential.
What BW conversion method did you use and how did you do the toning?
To be honest thorsten ,I’m only using elements 4.0 at the moment ,as soon as I know the basics I’ll move on.
I used Unsharp mask to try and get that grain that is viewable close up in prints ,then I just adjusted the hue and colour ,temp to try and get the tint i wantedAppreciate the feedback ,I would have liked someone walking along the footpath ,but it’s a quiet street :(
I understand totally what your saying ,I’ll give it another go.Brian, I think this image has bags of potential, but personally I’m not sure about your conversion of it. The hue/colouring seems a bit off and as Thorsten mentioned, my eyes are drawn towards the sky more than anything else. Can I suggest you post the original and let a few people have a go at the conversion and colouring? I’m sure you’ll get a few different takes on it and you may be able to pick up ideas as to how people convert to monochrome.
Thorsten’s right, there’s too much detail lost in the shadow areas.
Unsharp mask won’t give you grain, it’ll just increase the contrast between adjacent pixels at whatever setting you give it.
Better to add noise and then faff with how its applied.
My prefered way of converting to B&W is to use the channel mixer which is in image>adjustments>channel mixer – tick the monochrome option and faff with the sliders (not sure if this is available on Elements). As for toning, add new layers and fill them with blocks of colour and then faff with layer settings again.
Because of the high contrast it might have been best to take three bracketed shots of the scene to increase the dynamic range available for post processing – bracketing a stop or two either side would give you detail in the highlights and in the shadows which could be mashed in photoshop to give you a wider range of tones than you have in just the one contrasty shot. This is a very quick edit.thanks for the comments ,my connection is shot at the moment so I can’t upload ,
Apprecite the advice ,Brian.
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