Paul Stenquist <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >No, you're incorrect. My retoucher friend knows exactly what she's >talking about. She does fantastic work and is in great demand among pro >shooters at about $200 an hour.
I'm not disputing the ability of your friend to do good work (spectacularly good work in the case of the example you showed) or that she's worth $200.00 per hour. But her statements about the differences/merits of making tonal changes before and after greyscale conversion are factually incorrect, given the laws of physics and trichromatic color systems. How would she treat my example of a scene consisting of shades of gray, red and green that came out exactly the same after conversion? Only by selecting and masking different areas and applying levels/curves to each area separately. It's certainly a valid way of working, but it makes the statement that those using channel mixer recipes (a one-click action) have too much time on their hands a bit silly. >Sometimes she will go back and alter the color image to change the >conversion, That's the only way certain changes can be made. >but she's more likely to tinker with it after the fact. >She frequently uses curves and masks after the fact if more control >is needed. Exactly. >But she points out that the PhotoShop grayscale conversion provides an >accurate translation of a given color scene. Photoshop provides a *consistent* ratio of red-to-green-to-blue in greyscale conversion. But what is an "accurate" conversion? An accurate duplication of how Tri-X sees color? Or HP-5? Or any one of innumerable other B&W films? And even then the accuracy of the greyscale conversion is affected heavily by the color balance of the film or digital sensor that did the original color capture. >It's quite close to what the values would have been if shot without >filtration. On what film? That's the question. (And "what if you wanted to take a shot *with* filtration?") >She did the conversion and some after the >fact tuneup on my shot of the shoe shine man. >http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=3451662 That's magnificent work. I would stress that I'm not criticizing the quality of her work, the utility of her methods or the value of her services. Only her understanding of the physics involved. She's clearly developed an elaborate workflow that uses masks to work around what's being missed in the greyscale conversion (not necessarily in this particular example). The final *result*, in the end, is what's really important but it's not right that she dismiss the approach of others simply because she doesn't understand principles that are taught in freshman year of any good photography program. -- Mark Roberts Photography and writing www.robertstech.com
