Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: russell a on May 08, 2005, 01:50:49 pm

Title: Black & White Conversion plug-in
Post by: russell a on May 08, 2005, 01:50:49 pm
David:  This reminds me of the availabilty of filters (among others) that emulate the "sound" of saturated audio tape to "de-clean" digitally recorded music.  The other day I had a chance to see a William Kline print up close and the graininess was marvelous.  Try seriously underexposing your shots and then pushing the exposure slider to the max in the PS Raw processer and see if that does it for you.
Title: Black & White Conversion plug-in
Post by: David R. Gurtcheff on May 08, 2005, 03:05:43 pm
thank you both.
Dave
Title: Black & White Conversion plug-in
Post by: didger on May 09, 2005, 07:24:05 am
About a converter plug;  there may not be one that lets you add grain, but an excellent one for conversion is Convert to B/W Pro by The ImagingFactory; $100.  It's very versatile and effective and the interface is very easy and intuitive.
Title: Black & White Conversion plug-in
Post by: David R. Gurtcheff on May 08, 2005, 11:34:37 am
I recently received a nice print order, including three of my older B&W images, two shot on 35mm (probably Plus X), and one on 645 (Tri X). The client wanted big prints (16"x24"), which was a bit of a push from 35mm. The shots are seascapes of sand and pilings, fences, etc, with long shadows on the sand, and beautiful sand texture, due to late afternoon sun and orange filter. The orange filter darkend blue sky showed beautiful, sharp film grain; something missing from digital files converted to B&W. I want to recreate this "mood" in new B&W images. I now use a 1DS MkII. I just bought three REALLY cheap Takumar lenses on eBay (24mm f3.5, 50mm f1.4, and 105mm f2.8). I have an adapter to allow using these screw mount lenses on my MkII. My idea is to use these old lenses, shoot color, then convert to B&W. But I need a plug-in that not only converts to black and white (and apply yellow, orange or red filters after the fact), but I need to add "grain" to complete the nostalgic B&W "look". I tried Fred Miranda's plug in, but it completly blocks up the sand highlights. Anyone know of a plug-in?
Thanks
Dave G.
Title: Black & White Conversion plug-in
Post by: on May 08, 2005, 02:49:14 pm
There are very good tools for this built right into Photoshop.

Try Filter / Artistic / Film Grain, or, Filter / Noise / Add Noise, then season to taste.

Michael
Title: Black & White Conversion plug-in
Post by: russell a on May 08, 2005, 09:28:20 pm
Michael is, of course, correct about the tools available in PS.  But let me suggest that I think there is a difference between just dialing in a PS effect as opposed to having to put up a bit of a fight to pull a satifactory intensity curve out of an underexposed shot and getting the noise as a by-product in the way I suggest.  I think the result may be less linear in the latter case.  I also think there can be a virtue in not having complete control - often the application of a PS filter comes across, for me, as a bit too tidy.  If you are willing to be more "out of control" - my suggestion echos more the spirit of rating Tri-X at 1200 or more and using a souped-up and/or hot developer.  Try all approaches and see which you prefer.
Title: Black & White Conversion plug-in
Post by: Woodcorner on May 09, 2005, 12:18:43 pm
As for converting to B&W, I very much like the PS plugin by PowerRetouche named Black and White Studio (http://www.powerretouche.com/Black-white_plugin_introduction.htm). It lets you choose from a variety of virtual films and filters to imitate the way your analog gear looked like.
In addition you might want to add the PS filters sugested by Michael to add some "graininess" to the look.

Andrew