Black and White Digital Workflow

[pittsyandell]

I am wondering how everyone gets the best black and white images from their digitial cameras.

[Zach Matthews]

Hey Pitts –

Digital makes conversion to B & W easy, but you have to keep in mind what you want.

[pittsyandell]

Zach,

I picked the wooded face as film.

[Zach Matthews]

Hey Pitts –

You’re correct.

[pittsyandell]

Well I once was told I should be a hand model.

[pittsyandell]

On the photos, I cannot tell you exactly why I knew it was the face but it just seemed to have a depth and tonal range that digital cannot reproduce.

[david king]

In Photoshop go to adjustment>channel mixer and check monochrome, mix the channels in varying amounts until you achieve the look you want. Make sure the channels add up to 100%. Green usually has the most tone and detail. I have seen some other techniques by Russell Brown @ russellbrown.com and by Vincent Versace @ vincentversace.com. Vesace is really great I saw him at Photoshop World he is a classic BXW shooter like me and has come up with techniques in digtal that come really close to traditional black and white photography. He has a book coming out and several DVDs. Check him out. Russell Brown works for Adobe and is one of the geniuses behind Photoshop.

[anonymous]

There is a usefull look at the process here

http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/phs8bwconversion.pdf

certainly offers a lot of flexibity in manipulating tone.

Will

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