Does anyone have an opinion as to shooting pure B/W vs shooting in color, then converting to greyscale in photoshop? Does one look more appealing, or if you know what you are doing can PS look as good as a pure B/W? Thanks!
Well, I don't shoot in BW on my (incredibly cheap and featureless compared to all y'all's!) camera, because I find the dynamic range too compressed and blah. I shoot in color, mess with contrast and saturation and levels and whatnot, then turn it from 'Truecolor' to '256 greys' in my ACDSee image editing software. I find this gives much better results - I went through a period of shooting roughly the same thing twice, once in BW and once in color, then taking them home and messing with them, and it was a night-and-day difference. Not sure why. :->
Depends on the effect you want to achieve. Desaturate looks grainier and slightly darker, while "convert to greyscale" is smoother and brighter. My cam won't shoot b/w so I can't compare to that.
If you know what you are doing the, photoshop conversion will look a lot better than what you get from the camera. Lots more options in terms of how you map particular colours to particular shades of grey.
Doing an Image->greyscale is about the simplest and least appealing options and I think is similar to what is done in camera.
I found this site on converting to B/W and am wondering if the methods described are legal for DPC entries. The one using the channel mixer command in Photo Shop is what I wanted to try.
I found this site on converting to B/W and am wondering if the methods described are legal for DPC entries. The one using the channel mixer command in Photo Shop is what I wanted to try.
I believe the channel mixer is legal, nobody said otherwise when I started this thread. If it's not then I'll be self-DQing more than one previous entry!
Bod,
I knew I had read something before, it was your thread. Nobody actually referred to your question, so I guess that indirectly it is okay.
Thanks,
Dick
In traditional b&w photography, red,yellow,green,(etc) filters are used to darken certain colors and make them stand out from their surroundings when they are reduced to shades of grey...ie, a red filter dramatically darkens the sky.
If you shoot digitally in color, and do the conversion yourself, you're basically using a set of "infinite" filters to work with...instead of a basic yellow, red and green filter you can use the equivalent of any shade in between, using the channel mixer.
This is a fundamental advantage that I find digital B&W has over film. Which isn't to say I have a thorough understanding of how the channel mixer works completely, just passing information I've heard elsewhere :)
What you say is true about the infinite colour filters. The only problem I have is that at some point I have to go to 8-bit greyscales and the very restricted 256 grey levels that that allows.
I wish I could get 16-bit B&W images or get to duotones without having to go through that compressed tonal range stage.
Me too. Either way you do it you'd be restricted to 8 bits. Channel Mixer method if you shot in 12 bits you can probably get 12 bits after the selected channel mixing, but still very limited compare to the original 3 colors.
However, i think you can do some duotones without having to go through the intermediate stage. you just have desaturate certain colors or adjust R, G, B curves to your heart content.
Originally posted by Gordon:
What you say is true about the infinite colour filters. The only problem I have is that at some point I have to go to 8-bit greyscales and the very restricted 256 grey levels that that allows.
I wish I could get 16-bit B&W images or get to duotones without having to go through that compressed tonal range stage.
I've read in digital photography magazine that it's better to shoot in B/W than in color and then convert because all the pixels/memory used for color will then be used to raise the quality of your bw photo instead of searching to match a color which will then anyway be discarded later while converting. I don't know if that makes sense but this is what I read!
I personally prefer to always shoot in color and then convert to B/W later because you can do everything that the camera would be doing plus many more options. You can always put your camera in B/W or sepia to view yout scene prior to shooting to help determine what looks best in B/W and then switch back to color when you are shooting. I like to view the separate color channels in PS to determine a starting point for using the Channel Mixer.
