My comments were not specific to B&W conversion from a digital
capture, although I did allude to starting over with the RAW file as
I originally thought you had made the photo with the DS. The same
concepts hold in adjusting film scans. The Curves adjustments I
mentioned were all to be effected in the RGB or Grayscale space. You
should start with a B&W negative scan as a 16bit grayscale scan,
adjusted to capture the maximum amount of data.
Godfrey
On Oct 17, 2005, at 5:43 AM, Shel Belinkoff wrote:
Paul,
As I told Godfrey - perhaps you missed the post - this was not a
conversion. The pic was shot on Tri-X.
I have to chuckle a bit as it seems, more and more, that when
people see a
B&W (greyscale, whatever) photo, especially on the net, the immediate
thought is that it had been "converted". Not laughing at you, but
at the
idea of how ingrained the "digital workflow" has become.
As for the sharpening, I believe I used only selective sharpening -
just
the dog and the backpack and case. I may take another look at the
original
and trace the workflow. Maybe with my meager skills the pic can be
improved.
Shel
[Original Message]
From: Paul Stenquist
I had to nod when I read Godfrey's comment. Love the shot, but I
found
the BW conversion a bit odd myself. However, I find it hard to
express
what that oddity cold be other than to say that it might be worth
going
back to the channel mixer. Sometimes it's worth seeing how the
PhotoShop direct grayscale conversion looks and compare that to
channel
mixer results. While you may not end up using the direct
conversion, it
an sometimes help define a direction. I think that my impression
of the
current rendering is that the whites all seem a bit muddy, yet there
appears to be almost too much contrast in the midtone grays. Perhaps
it's due to sharpening. I'm not sure where you might go on this -- if
anywhere other than where you're at -- but it might merit a second
look.
http://home.earthlink.net/~scbelinkoff/pooch.html
