Blue Fjord Pano in B/W

[NorthernFocus]

I've never been satisfied with the processing on this image so thought I'd take a stab at a B/W version. One thing I don't like is that the first point (right side of frame) doesn't stand out as well in this version. The B/W processing was simply reduced saturation to zero, kicked brightness up a bit in greens, fiddled with levels for my contrast, and added just a slight sepia filter over all. Any suggestions from those of you who are good at B/W(Donald) would be appreciated.

Large version is 1200px wide.

[Mike Buckley]

Almost all monochromes will work better if you convert them rather than desaturate them. For a thorough understanding of why that's true, read Vincent Versace's From Oz to Kansas. A good start for most scenes like this is to convert using a yellow filter.

[IzzieK]

Dan...I would dearly want to see more sky here to balance the scene...

[NorthernFocus]

Almost all monochromes will work better if you convert them rather than desaturate them...

Convert them? How/with what?

[Downrigger]

Almost all monochromes will work better if you convert them rather than desaturate them. For a thorough understanding of why that's true, read Vincent Versace's From Oz to Kansas. A good start for most scenes like this is to convert using a yellow filter.

All I can add is that as a very inexperienced PP-er, I use Nik silver efex after LR, and seems to me I get much better results if I take the image into Nik Silver Efex in fully pp'd color, than if the image I take into Nik is LR's B&W conversion version. I'm guessing this is a version of the same concept, but maybe not.

Thanks for the tip on the read, Mike

[dabhand]

Convert them? How/with what?

Dan - If you have P/shop CS6 and don't have NIK or other such plugins, I find Image>Adjustments>Gradient Map and select the black/white gradient (or any other if you want to tone the image) gives a great place to start.

steve

[NorthernFocus]

Dan - If you have P/shop CS6 and don't have NIK or other such plugins, I find Image>Adjustments>Gradient Map and select the black/white gradient (or any other if you want to tone the image) gives a great place to start.

steve

No CS6 nor NIK but I did just notice the B&W panel in LR that I've been ignoring thus far. Presumably the LR version of "conversion".

[Mike Buckley]

Convert them? How/with what?

There are two primary principles involved in converting: The black, white and grey shades are made up of equal values of the RGB channels. Having created the file that way, all print heads of an inkjet printer are used to print the image.

None of that is true when desaturating. In fact, desaturation is so different that a desaturated file has exactly one-third the information of a converted file.

Some software, such as Photoshop Elements (I assume Photoshop CC and CS), Lightroom and Nikon Capture NX2, has a tool that converts. Those tools allow you to control the part of the spectrum of light through which the conversion is filtered.

That's how black-and-white film photographers controlled how the colors in a scene were converted to monochrome. They placed a color filter on the lens. Whatever color filter is chosen, that color in the scene will be bright once converted to monochrome and the color on the opposite side of the color wheel will be dark.

Some of the converter tools are explicitly called converters and others are not. It's easy to come across a tool in software indicating that it changes the images to black-and-white but it's not always easy to immediately know whether it is using the desaturation process or the conversion process. If the tool provides the capability to select the color of the filter, it is using the conversion process.

[NorthernFocus]

Thanks, Mike. I'll give it a try and see what the differences are.

[Mike Buckley]

Dan - If you have P/shop CS6 and don't have NIK or other such plugins, I find Image>Adjustments>Gradient Map and select the black/white gradient (or any other if you want to tone the image) gives a great place to start.

It would be good to clarify whether that tool uses the conversion process. If it doesn't allow you to select the color of the filter being used during the conversion process, my guess is that the tool is probably desaturating rather than converting. Don't confuse selecting a color being used to tone the image with a color being used as the filter to convert the image; toning and filtering are very different processes with very different results.

[rpcrowe]

Dan, why don't you give the free download trial of Perfect Photo Suite a try. They have a version that works quite well with Lightroom. In addition to B&W conversion, Perfect Photo Suite also provides masking capabilities as well as a lot of other useful and fun bells and whistles...
http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/suite8/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFZfuPKWE7A

[dabhand]

It would be good to clarify whether that tool uses the conversion process. If it doesn't allow you to select the color of the filter being used during the conversion process, my guess is that the tool is probably desaturating rather than converting. Don't confuse selecting a color being used to tone the image with a color being used as the filter to convert the image; toning and filtering are very different processes with very different results.

Mike - the gradient map doesn't desaturate, it maps the lightest tones of your image to one color in the gradient and changes the darkest tones to the other color of the gradient ie white and black if one just uses those as the gradient range - though any two (or more for that matter) colours may be used.


steve

[Mike Buckley]

Mike - the gradient map doesn't desaturate, it maps the lightest tones of your image to one color in the gradient and changes the darkest tones to the other color of the gradient ie white and black if one just uses those as the gradient range - though any two (or more for that matter) colours may be used.

I just now reviewed about six different tutorials about how to use the gradient map in the context that we're discussing. Having done that, I'm reasonably confident that using the gradient map layer does two things: First, it changes the image from color to black-and-white. Second, it gives you the opportunity to map the various luminosity values in the black-and-white image to whatever color values you select.

None of the tutorials explained the exact process used to change the color image to black-and-white but I did note that none of the tutorials mentioned anything about selecting a color filter. So, that leaves two possibilities: either the program is converting using a color filter of Adobe's choosing (which I highly doubt) or the program is desaturating the color image.

Perhaps more important, if you want to be sure that you are using a conversion process and thus retaining three times as much information as using a desaturation process, you could simply use CS6's Black and White Adjustment layer. That process allows you to choose the exact color of the filter to be used to convert from color to black-and-white.

[NorthernFocus]

Thanks, All. Richard I do have Perfect Photo Suite and will poke around with the B/W module. From Mike's description can't tell which method is applies. I rarely dink around with B/W so not going to launch on a serious mission to figure it out.

[IzzieK]

Mike - the gradient map doesn't desaturate, it maps the lightest tones of your image to one color in the gradient and changes the darkest tones to the other color of the gradient ie white and black if one just uses those as the gradient range - though any two (or more for that matter) colours may be used. steve

Thanks Steve...I just tried this method with my white vodka wine bottle (empty) and it did it very well to my satisfactinon...I will try this for a while just to get use to it...I am sure I can do more. I have tried Image/Adjustment layer before but I had not been satisfied as this one had shown just now...maybe I do not know much about this latter one as yet but instant result is better than going into deep analysis for now.

You are a big help. Thanks again.

[bnnrcn]

I like the image,I agree with Isabel about more sky

[NorthernFocus]

Thanks for all the feedback. When I get a chance I will likely start from scratch with a new B/W version. It is worth the time to work with the conversions a bit. It occurred to me that foggy/rainy days on the water offer good opportunities for B/W. Typically I shoot very little on those days which is a shame as it is really the majority of the time. That sort of weather pretty much defines Prince William Sound.

Here is the color version of the image. Note I didn't have any additional sky to work with so on the B/W version I reduced the amount of water. In the color version the water is indicative of the name of the place. Plus I was trying to capture the effect of the rain on the water. When I rework the B/W I may stretch the sky a bit to add the suggested space.



For comparison with the B/W version from the OP.

[IzzieK]

Just extend your canvas a bit and clone some sky...easy peasy...

[dragon76]

Dan

Firstly, nice image you got there. Good compo!. I'd recommend conversion rather than desat. Apart from printing output issue, theorectically, grayscale and desaturation processes are equivalent. In practice however, desaturation would also strip certain amount of details and depth of the image (some images are more noticable than others). If you are using lightroom there is a conversion function on the right panel. By the way, I like your desat B&W more than the colored one. I am with you with the water treatment. IMO, waves details are crucial factor that define the body of water (ie lake vs river vs sea ). I rarely smooth out the water unless there are nice reflected artificial lights at night time or there are polutions that I want to hide.

In PS, there are several ways you can convert to grayscale and here a a few that I know.

1. Image > Mode > Grayscale
b. Add an adjustment Layer (as Mike mentioned)
3. Convert to LAB mode and extract luminos B&W channel

Depending on what you want your final image to look like, blending gradient Map ( again as Mike mentioned) and RGB channel layers should give you very interesting B/W results.


Cheers

Dean

[NorthernFocus]

Thanks for the tips, Dean and Izzie.