B&W Conversions
September 20th, 2006
Great B&W work lies nearer alchemy than science. The arcana of developing (time, temp, solution, dilution, agitation) can take a lifetime to master (although passable results are as simple as following the directions on the box). Small changes in any of the many variables can cause wildly diverging results. And that’s before you get to printing or scanning (and then printing digitally, which is its own alchemy). For a certain kind of mind - inquisitive, stuborn, tedious, etc - it’s all damn good fun.
One would think that it might be easier to just take digital files and convert them to B&W. In fact, many cameras include modes that do this in camera including the D80. When you know what B&W can look like, these modes just don’t satisfy. Neither do many of the more ‘advanced’ methods of doing these conversions in post. There’s a least three ways to do it in photoshop (channel mixer, plain old desaturate, switching to lab color and splitting the channels). There are probably other ways as well. And then there’s the various stand alone and plugin apps that promise either better or easier to achieve results. Lightzone seems to be one of the newest and the most promising.
Getting the most out of these tools require a lot of not easily acquired information. If you don’t know the spectral response and density curves of the B&W film you are emulating or how to put that information to use, the results are rather hit or miss. Along with all that take into account that digital sensors respond to light completely differently than B&W; how does one map a linear response onto a curve with big shoulder and toe regions? How do you get shadow densities comparable to B&W without pushing your highlights all out of wack. This is hard enough on B&W film, which already has an acommodating curve. On digital it seems near impossible to do with any regularity.
For all that, there are some people out there doing incredible B&W work on digital. It’s apparently not impossible, but I sure don’t understand how to do it, yet. See the pic below. Bringing up shadows moved the highlights up to 255. Even ignoring the highlights, the noise in the shadows had already taken on offensive look. Blah.
See the photo blog for a color version.
One would think that it might be easier to just take digital files and convert them to B&W. In fact, many cameras include modes that do this in camera including the D80. When you know what B&W can look like, these modes just don’t satisfy. Neither do many of the more ‘advanced’ methods of doing these conversions in post. There’s a least three ways to do it in photoshop (channel mixer, plain old desaturate, switching to lab color and splitting the channels). There are probably other ways as well. And then there’s the various stand alone and plugin apps that promise either better or easier to achieve results. Lightzone seems to be one of the newest and the most promising.
Getting the most out of these tools require a lot of not easily acquired information. If you don’t know the spectral response and density curves of the B&W film you are emulating or how to put that information to use, the results are rather hit or miss. Along with all that take into account that digital sensors respond to light completely differently than B&W; how does one map a linear response onto a curve with big shoulder and toe regions? How do you get shadow densities comparable to B&W without pushing your highlights all out of wack. This is hard enough on B&W film, which already has an acommodating curve. On digital it seems near impossible to do with any regularity.
For all that, there are some people out there doing incredible B&W work on digital. It’s apparently not impossible, but I sure don’t understand how to do it, yet. See the pic below. Bringing up shadows moved the highlights up to 255. Even ignoring the highlights, the noise in the shadows had already taken on offensive look. Blah.
See the photo blog for a color version.
September 20th, 2006
I kind of like LightZone. I’ve messed with it some in Linux. For some reason the Linux version of it is free. (http://sonic.net/~rat/lightcrafts/)
(OT: I guess if someone really wanted a way to save money, but was stuck running Windows, they could run a VirtualMachine with VMWare Player and Linux and have free LightZone… but not sure that is worth it…)
Personally, once I put a significant commitment into something like Photoshop though, its awfully hard to completely switch to anything else.
September 20th, 2006
I know what you mean. LightZone seems interesting, but I’m heavily invested into photoshop for so many aspects of my workflow. I can’t see LightZone replacing PS, so its hard to get excited about investing in learning another program.
September 20th, 2006
If you give me an email I’ll send you the famous Petteri actions for b&w conversion (his site is not available now)…
September 20th, 2006
I agree that the digital to BW workflow is fraught with difficulty. Some conversions look great while others seem to be quite lacking…shoulder effects of film not adequately replicated?
In Photoshop Convert to B/W Pro from Imaging Factory has a lot to offer. Pre filter colors film replication and contrast as negative and print control.
Have you seen the BW Jpegs from the RD-1? Amazing in depth…see Nick Soons files from Flickr on the recent Euro Jazz Festival.
I am interested in what you find to replicate your own BW work which from the Hexar has been wonderful. I look forward to what you discover.
With regards,
Bob Moore
September 20th, 2006
I’ll take at the Imaging Factory, and I’ll look around flickr for Nick Soons.
I appreciate the kind words, but my own B&W film work is just beginning to get beyond the hit or miss stage; I’m more often dissapointed than I am pleased.