I have to do a b & w digital shoot: I am using a Kodak 14n and am pretty certain that will be shooting at 400asa. Obviously at this speed I will be getting some noise and I was wondering if tinkering about with colour channels before doing the conversion to grayscale would be of any benefit?
Also are there any advantages to using the Lab Colour > Lightness channel to convert to Grayscale as opposed to using Channel Mixer?
Michael:
I've not investigated the 14n yet, but if it's like other digital sensors the blue channel is going to be the most hideous. You could try running the channel mixer to mix a bit of the "green" channel into the blue. Keep in mind this will change the overall color balance, but may clean up some of the noise.
The green channel is typically the cleanest due to the design of the sensor (more green that blue or red sensors).
Moving the image to LAB you can always use the gaussian blur on the B channel, and a bit on the A. This will reduce color fringing without affecting sharpness. Then move back to RGB for custom blending. I sometime also do some channel blends with the "image >> calculations" feature. This helps if you are having problems with specific colors that become the same tone in B&W.
I can give a run down on how I do this if anyone is interested, though there are methods that are less arcane that the image calculations route. I just fall back on it as I know if works and it gets me there quickest... though often with a bewildering number of steps. ;-)
Recently I discovered an easier way to use the image >> calculations feature while in LAB, and this only takes about 4 steps to a wonder b&w sep about 80 percent of the time.
David
David Riecks (that's "i" before "e", but the "e" is silent) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.riecks.com/ Midwest/Chicago ASMP * ph/fax 877-646-5375
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