Black and white...

[Oh_Heck]

I've got a couple pictures i've been messing around with from morguefile.com that I would like to get some feedback on. My goal was to take some fairly mundane shots and try to make them much more visually interesting.


Cont...

[Oh_Heck]

A couple more..

[Oh_Heck]

aaaand....

[edgework]

Originally Posted by Oh_Heck

I've got a couple pictures i've been messing around with from morguefile.com that I would like to get some feedback on. My goal was to take some fairly mundane shots and try to make them much more visually interesting.


Cont...

I like the woman with the head wrap in your first post, though you should work on the color version before converting to bw to either darken or lighten the yellow cloth. Contrasts just fine against the skin in color. In bw it is almost identical, both against her cheek and against the purple .

The duotone in your first post is not too successful. Way oversharpened, and the duotone is way too harsh. Also, you seem to have applied tone evenly across the whole range, tinting even your lightest highlights. How did you create it? Duotone mode gives you much flexibility in how your colors are distributed between lights and darks.

Here are two versions I played around with. Great shot to work with; would love the high res version.

http://edgework.tripod.com/samples/g...ther_color.jpg
http://edgework.tripod.com/samples/gran_mother_bw.jpg

[Oh_Heck]

Thx for the feedback Edgework. Actually for the first shot I used Hue/Sat in colorize mode to create the color. You mentioned the tone is applied evenly across the whole range. Isn't that what color mode and photo filter do? I've never used duotone mode. I'll definitely look into that.

As for the sharpening, you are probably right. I'll redo the image with a little less on the sharpening..but my goal with the picture was to try and bring out as much surface detail as I could while avoiding ghosting and such that you get when oversharpening.

You mentioned the yellow cloth on the second image, and I agree. That brings up another question though. When shooting a picture in black and white, are the values for colors displayed differently then you would get when desaturating an image in photoshop? Say the yellow and purple for example in the old lady shot.

[Oh_Heck]

Oh, as for the hi res version, go here, click on the floppy disc icon...

http://www.morguefile.com/archive/?display=144897&

[des151]

Hi Oh_Heck,
I couldn't resist attempting a b&w of this Lady. Hope you don't mind.
Ray

[edgework]

Originally Posted by Oh_Heck

Thx for the feedback Edgework. Actually for the first shot I used Hue/Sat in colorize mode to create the color. You mentioned the tone is applied evenly across the whole range. Isn't that what color mode and photo filter do? I've never used duotone mode. I'll definitely look into that.

...

You mentioned the yellow cloth on the second image, and I agree. That brings up another question though. When shooting a picture in black and white, are the values for colors displayed differently then you would get when desaturating an image in photoshop? Say the yellow and purple for example in the old lady shot.

Hue/Saturation is able to approximate some of the results possible in duotone mode but it's not an intuitive process. In a duotone, you have a curve for each color. You can determine in a straightforward manner how much you want each color to influence things across the whole range. It's a "more-or-less" proposition the whole way. With colorize mode in hue/sat, you have to make choises between light and dark (not at all the same as a curve), more or less saturation... and if one of your colors is, say, yellow, and you want a deeply saturated yellow tint, but still retain all detail with the black ink, colorize pretty much washes out, whereas you can get precisely what you want with the right curves. And they behave pretty much the way you'd expect them to going in.

As for the third question, I'm not really sure. Off the top of my head I'd say that yellow would read as a lighter color than purple, so I'm surprised that yours came out with both so similar (unless you played around with plates, emphasizing one that missed the contrast.

[duwayne]

Originally Posted by des151

Hi Oh_Heck,
I couldn't resist attempting a b&w of this Lady. Hope you don't mind.
Ray

Ray - Very nice! I like the extra detail in the headband and the texture of her face. Can you describe the techniques you used?

[des151]

Thanks duwayne.
1. copy bg
2.Hue&sat adj. layer normal 100% op -master- hue +12.
3.Hue&sat adj. layer color 100% op edit-yellows sat +50, lightness -20, blue
sat +8, magentas sat -20.
4.Selective color options adj. layer normal 100% -absolute-colors- blacks- black 8%.
5.Hue&sat adj. layer normal 100% op. edit master sat. -100.
6. Curves adj. layer normal 100%.center point, 2nd point input 167, output 179.
7.New layer-shift/ctrl/alt/E-highpass sharp radius 2.0 pixels- Linear light 79% op.
8. 50% Gray layer overlay 58% paint with black on white headband.
9. another 50% gray layer overlay 75% paint with black a little more touchup on white headband.

Ray

[duwayne]

Thanks Ray for such detail steps. I was able to reproduce your results exactly. I think the key steps are the high-pass filter with linear light blending mode and painting with black on a 50% gray layer to bring out the details in the headband. Thanks again!

[des151]

duwayne,
You're welcome. I'm glad to be of some help to you.
Ray