# Digital Black and White



## Zulu2 (May 4, 2010)

Hi all.

I'm just getting back into taking pictures since 2005.

I started taking pictures (serious amature) back in the early 70's, took university course and 2 nikon courses, etc. Mostly black and white (had a darkroom) and color slides. Lost all, 30+ years of images in New Orleans flood. :violin:

I want to do black and white and thought I wanted to shoot film again so I bought a few familiar friends (nikon fe's). But I've come to the conclusion that I don't have the time to get into the darkroom again.

So, I'm going digital using my Canon EOS10D I bought in 2004 to do black and white. 

I'll be looking for advice as to techiques and the do's and don'ts of digital B&W, sources for printing photo's etc.

I've ordered photoshop elements and lightroom which I believe should give me the tools to prepare the images.

Any advice on this process will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Joe


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## icassell (May 4, 2010)

The one thing I can recommend is that you DO NOT use the desaturate tool in PS.  It is simple to use, but the resulatant B/W images is poor.  I don't know about elements, but CS4 has a set of individual color sliders which make fine B/W adjustment easy (and simulate filters that we put in front of the lens in the film era).

There are a couple of excellent books that I've found useful:

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1598633759/ref=oss_product]Amazon.com: Mastering Digital Black and White: A Photographer&#39;s Guide to High Quality Black-and-White Imaging and Printing (Digital Process and Print) (9781598633757): Amadou Diallo: Books[/ame]

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1600592104/ref=oss_product]Amazon.com: Advanced Digital Black & White Photography (A Lark Photography Book) (9781600592102): John Beardsworth: Books[/ame]


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## KmH (May 4, 2010)

The tools for doing B&W conversions in Elements are rudimentry at best.  In Lightroom, dodge and burn are somewhat cumbersome but the big limiter is no adjustment layers, or any other kind of layers for that matter. 

Nik Software makes some good B&W conversion tools and Photoshop CS5 is also good but costs $700 retail. The upside of PS/CS5 is that upgrades (CS6, CS7, CS8) then only cost $199 each. Upgrades usually appear every 18 months, but many skip an upgrade or 2.


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## icassell (May 4, 2010)

Yes, NIK comes highly recommended and you can get a free trial:

The Power of Black and White


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## Zulu2 (May 4, 2010)

Thanks for the reference books Ian.



KmH said:


> The tools for doing B&W conversions in Elements are rudimentry at best. In Lightroom, dodge and burn are somewhat cumbersome but the big limiter is no adjustment layers, or any other kind of layers for that matter.
> 
> Nik Software makes some good B&W conversion tools and Photoshop CS5 is also good but costs $700 retail. The upside of PS/CS5 is that upgrades (CS6, CS7, CS8) then only cost $199 each. Upgrades usually appear every 18 months, but many skip an upgrade or 2.


 
Keith, 

I've been reading up on PS and thought the elements and lightroom would be good.  I may be able to change the order.  Is CS5 all I would need or would one of the other 2 compliment it?

Thanks
Joe


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## icassell (May 4, 2010)

If you have any academic affiliation (if you are a student or faculty or if you have kids who are students), you can get significant discounts from Adobe.

https://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/st...shopExtendedSTE&loc=en_us&categoryOid=4529549


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## TomBlaze (May 4, 2010)

Simple answer is to shoot in monochrome mode with the camera. Or shoot in raw and converto to black and white in the RAW editor. You can also use a black and white adjustment layer in Photoshop and then there is the old school conversion that I still use from time to time:

Open the file in Photoshop. Convert color space to Lab mode. In the channels palette, delete the a and b channels (leaving only the lightness channel). The image turns to a crisp B&W. Change the image mode to grayscale. Duplicate the main layer use the high pass filter (set to about 10-15 pixels) on the new layer and set it to either soft light or overlay and adjust opacity to suit.

Works pretty well for me.


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## Zulu2 (May 4, 2010)

Thanks for all the info.

Where do you guys get your printing done if you're not doing it yourself?

Local or on-line?

Joe


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## KmH (May 4, 2010)

Zulu2 said:


> Thanks for the reference books Ian.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Elements is a simplified consumer version of PS/CS. If you have PS/CS you don't need Elements.

Many photographers use both Lightroom and PS/CS. They use Lightroom to batch edit photos and use PS/CS for specific local edits to individual photos.

Adobe designed Lightroom to primarily be an image database manager. They included a robust version of Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) to allow some image editing too. PS/CS has a less robust version of ACR and an image management section known as Bridge.

So there is some overlap but each program has it's advantages over the other and they are complementary.


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## icassell (May 4, 2010)

Zulu2 said:


> Thanks for all the info.
> 
> Where do you guys get your printing done if you're not doing it yourself?
> 
> ...



I decided that the cost of maintenance/ink upkeep on my own printer was not worth it. I don't print enough to make it viable. I use mpix.com for printing and have been very happy with them.


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## Zulu2 (May 4, 2010)

Thanks to all again for your input.  Helps me out a great deal.

Joe


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## eric-holmes (May 6, 2010)

I would like to hear more about this NIK software. I am about to download a free trial. Who here actually uses it?


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## aprillove20 (May 7, 2010)

Well, Elements is a simplified consumer version of PS/CS.


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## icassell (May 7, 2010)

eric-holmes said:


> I would like to hear more about this NIK software. I am about to download a free trial. Who here actually uses it?




Well, I've been pretty happy with the B/W abilities of CS4, so I decided to save money and not buy NIK.  On the other hand, I've heard many good things about it and there are those who prefer it significantly to PS.


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## vvkozmenko (May 12, 2010)

Hi, 

There are about 11-12 methods of converting color image into B&W.

This is one of them: open an image in Photoshop. Go to "Layer" and create a new "Adjustment Layer" - select "Channel Mixer".

In the channel mixer, check the "Monochrome" checkbox. Using different values for different colors, you can simulate different films or effects.

Agfa 200X: 18,41,41  
Agfapan 25: 25,39,36 
Agfapan 100: 21,40,39 
Agfapan 400: 20,41,39 
Ilford Delta 100: 21,42,37
Ilford Delta 400: 22,42,36
Ilford Delta 400 Pro & 3200: 31,36,33 
Ilford FP4: 28,41,31
Ilford HP5: 23,37,40
Ilford Pan F: 33,36,31
Ilford SFX: 36,31,33
Ilford XP2 Super: 21,42,37 
Kodak Tmax 100: 24,37,39
Kodak Tmax 400: 27,36,37 
Kodak Tri-X: 25,35,40 

Normal Contrast: 43,33,30
High Contrast: 40,34,60 
generic  BW: 24,68,8. 
50,50,0 or 25,75,0.
Kodak HIE! (infrared) 100,100,-100

These numbers were posted by someone on this site and you can also find them in literature.

I've resumed my B&W film photography. I do not print - just scan the negatives. Tonal range in B&W film is much better than in digital, especially in the lights. 

There is a problem to find a good quality scanning service though.

I've tried several in New Orleans area, and it is difficult to get what you want. 

There are some other services in the US, but to get a professional grade scan is about $27.00-$30.00 per 35 mm roll.

Hope this helps.

Val


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## Zulu2 (May 13, 2010)

vvkozmenko said:


> Hi,
> 
> I've resumed my B&W film photography. I do not print - just scan the negatives. Tonal range in B&W film is much better than in digital, especially in the lights.
> 
> ...


 
Thanks Val.  Unfortunately, you have me re-thinking my venturing into digital B&W.  I did enjoy film for so long I appreciate the "analog" tonal characteristics it pocesses.

So digital printing from scanned film produces superior prints?

Have you considered purchasing a scanner?

Joe


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## skieur (May 19, 2010)

KmH said:


> The tools for doing B&W conversions in Elements are rudimentry at best. In Lightroom, dodge and burn are somewhat cumbersome but the big limiter is no adjustment layers, or any other kind of layers for that matter.
> 
> Nik Software makes some good B&W conversion tools and Photoshop CS5 is also good but costs $700 retail. The upside of PS/CS5 is that upgrades (CS6, CS7, CS8) then only cost $199 each. Upgrades usually appear every 18 months, but many skip an upgrade or 2.


 
The best tool for black and white is Silver EFX by Nik Software as a plug-in for Photoshop or PaintShop Pro X3.  I don't use it however, because I do colour only.

skieur


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## vvkozmenko (May 20, 2010)

Joe





> Thanks Val.  Unfortunately, you have me re-thinking my venturing into digital B&W.  I did enjoy film for so long I appreciate the "analog" tonal characteristics it pocesses.
> 
> So digital printing from scanned film produces superior prints?
> 
> ...


Hi, Joe. Probably I am going to buy Plustek 7600 AI. I have read pretty good reviews of it. It costs about $500.00. Coolscan is definitely a better choice but I cannot afford to spend 2K+ on a scanner now.

Val


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## duneshot (Feb 17, 2013)

Hi, 

I'm new here but not to photography. Like Val I've gone back to using film but process my own in a roll film tank then scan the negative using an Epson scanner then processs the scanned negative using Photoshop CS5. Developing your own film is really a simple process and the results are excellent. I scan at 1200 dpi. I do keep the scan as RGB and desaturate, or use other methods, then crop and use levels to get the image close to what I want then save as a TIF. Now I can go ahead and process the image any way I want even to tone it since It's saved as a RGB.   Now this a digital print that contains those beautiful whites, grays and blacks with all the tonality we love. Now I need to upload an example when I learn how to upload <g>. BTW I save the original scan "as scanned", as an original "digital negative". This is really an easier and fun way of printing a black and white (or a color print by not desaturating). Proper exposure when taking the photograph, though, is always the best.
Hope I'm not confusing anyone (It's Late)

duneshot


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## greybeard (Feb 17, 2013)

vvkozmenko said:


> Hi,
> 
> There are about 11-12 methods of converting color image into B&W.
> 
> ...


Just tried this one...............it works well.


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## BrianV (Feb 17, 2013)

An old thread- If you are shooting film, why not shoot black and white and use color filters when shooting?

For conversion- I got Silver Efex-2 with the last camera. The software has a fairly easy interface to follow for converting color digital to monochrome, tried it out with some color images. You can select a "color filter" as you would have used with black and white film. My experience: turn off image sharpening applied by Lightroom (or others?) before doing the color conversion. The results at the default settings produced jagged/ragged edges.


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## AlanKlein (Feb 18, 2013)

I have both Elements 8 and LR3.  I find LR3 better when converting.  It allows individual adjustments to up to 8 different colors to get different shades of grey, much better control than Elements.  Here are conversions using these two prorgams plus some were done with a test version of Silver Efex Pro.  The thing I played with is the contrasts to make some shots more "filmlike" and less so.  You'll have to judge what you like but I think a have a good asortment there.  Good luck with whatever you work with.
Digital B/W - a set on Flickr


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