Converting to black and white using Lightroom

[aries67]

I'm a huge black and white fan and have been developing my monochrome skills in CS2 and feel that I'm "getting there".

I've recently loaded Lightroom onto my system and have started to learn the ropes and have found the preset black and white actions that are considered "a place to start".

I would like to know if other black and white photographers have a preference for their bw processing. CS or Lightroom? Does Lightroom have the same capabilities to produce strong bw images that CS does? Or do you use something else completely?

http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s263/aries67/bottlebrush-duotone.jpg

[Rob]

Hi Gabby, Don't know much about B&W but after seeing this image I could become a big fan. Will be interested to get other thoughts. Regards

[Paul S]

Can't speak for Lightroom, but here are some comments...

The "standard" way of converting to B&W is to use the Channel Mixer in PS CS. Lots of control that way.

The one way NOT to do it is to simply desaturate. Well it'll work, but it won't give you the best results. Converting to B&W by changing the "mode" (did I get that right? I don't have PS in front of me) is better, but still gives you no control.

An easy way that works in PSE as well as CS (PSE doesn't have the channel mixer), from Russell Brown at Adobe: Make two Hue/Saturation adjustment layers over your image. Set the top one to desaturate the image (yes, even though I just said not to do that). Set the one below it, but above the image, to a blending mode of "color", and play with the Hue slider. Heck, play with the saturation slider, too. Lots of cool effects. If you want, you can make multiple versions of this layer with different layer masks to have different effects in different parts of the image. Lots of flexibility, and it's really easy to use.

-Paul

[aries67]

Paul you are quite right, Russell Brown's two Hue & Sat layers are an excellent way to convert - I just keep forgetting which layer to desaturate! It's also a variation that I often forget is there - thanks for reminding me. :)

He has some excellent bw ps actions that I've already downloaded from the internet. I've even downloaded some of his video tutorials - they are very good! I found them here http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html

That's the thing - I've discovered so many ways to convert to bw in CS2 I'm not really sure I want to change my workflow to Lightroom if I can't achieve the same kind of results. I've found a book on Lightroom by Scott Kelby that I'm currently reading. Perhaps in a few weeks I might be able to shed some more light on bw conversions in LR!

[Jonathan]

both CS3 and lightroom use the same(or close enough) raw processor. Therefore assuming you perform your black and white conversion in raw using cs2 your technique should not change for lightroom. Only difference would be using selective layers for brightness/contrast etc in cs2 if needed. As lightroom has no layer masks

[aries67]

No I'm still a jpeg girl Jonathon!

I've been looking for reasons to use RAW but so far the only real reason is white balance. But working with bw seems to "fix" wb errors anyway.

I know jpeg's degrade with work which I see so often in my own bw processing so I'm considering TIFF instead.

Anybody out there use TIFF? Would love some feedback!

http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s263/aries67/bw_death-lily-1.jpg

[viewfinder]

Hi Gabby,

Firstly welcome to the forum! Good to see another member from Downunder!

I am a B&W fan too, though not an expert in B&W post processing. Sometimes I just shoot with in-camera B&W setting altogether to save the hassle of converting.

When I do venture into some B&W post processing, below are a few resources that I use. I usually go from one to the other, experimenting and sometimes making use of all of them in a single image, trial and error I guess, I find there isn't really a single formula that will fit every single image.

optikVerve Labs has a free PS plug-in called virtualPhotographer which is very useful, it has a set of colour and B&W filters which you can further customise and save. I find it a very useful starting point for most of my more adventurous post processing attempts. The filter currently only works in 8-bit mode though.
http://www.optikvervelabs.com/

For Lightroom which I have started to try out, you can find a set of B&W and other presets here, haven't played with it extensively yet, but has the usual ingredient for B&W conversion:
http://inside-lightroom.com/bw.php

CS3, Camera RAW 4 and Lightroom now offer pretty much the same B&W conversion workflow, and moving away from the usual channel mixer approach. I never liked or mastered the channel mixer approach, and the new workflow kind of make it more straightforward, and do away with having to add everything up to a 100, so I guess it is simpler, but there are a lot more parameters to contend with. You can find a quick discussion here:
http://www.creativepro.com/printerfriendly/story/25764.html

Regarding JPEG or RAW, I find JPEG is fine for B&W, unless you want to have both colour and B&W variation of the same image, in which case RAW should give you more headroom when post processing in colour mode. I used to shoot JPEG only, but have now caught the RAW bug, also since I started using CS3 I find Camera RAW 4 provides a much easier workflow for RAW.

Hope these help. Look forward to seeing more of you work, these two you have posted look great and very well done! Love the abstract in the second one!


Regards,
Jonathan