Image processing

[Vesa]

Hello. Just joined the forum...

Really not sure how this thing works so I just give it a shot.

I own both E-1 and E-300 camera bodies and use Adobe Photoshot Elements 4.0 for image processing...
So my question is... Does the APE 4 raw converter do good enough job or should I use another software ?
Secondly, what is the "right" way to make black&white images in APE 4 ? My main concern being the overall tonal balance. Just clicking MODE>GRAYSCALE makes the image look, well I`d say faded/ not dynamic...

Since I just joined and new here...sorry for my english which isn´t so great

[Lisa Nikodym]

Welcome to the LL forum!  No problem with the language - you're much better at  English than I'm sure I am in your native language! :-)

I don't know much about Photoshop Elements, but am a big user of Photoshop.  If the raw converter in PSE is the same as the one in PS, then it's one of the top raw converters, and you don't need anything else.  (Some people prefer it to the other "big" ones, others prefer one or the other of the other converters, but it's definitely one of the "big" ones).  Hopefully someone else here can comment on whether the converters in PSE and PS are the same or not...

Does PSE have the Channel Mixer in its menus?  If so, then that's the best way in PSE to convert to B&W.  You click the check box at the bottom of the Channel Mixer window that makes it monochrome, then adjust the three color channels in whatever proportion you want to give you a B&W image.  If PSE doesn't have the Channel Mixer and you're serious about B&W photography, you should consider upgrading from PSE to PS.

There are also some third-party Photoshop plug-in programs that convert to B&W that a lot of people like (and which no doubt other people here will tell you about), but I don't know whether they will work with Elements.

Lisa

[Mark D Segal]

If you are using a Mac computer you can download the new Adobe Lightroom Beta and use its tools for conversion to black and white. I attended a seminar on Lightroom and am given to understand that Lightroom is as good as the best Black and White conversion plug-ins to photoshop, with the added advantage that Adobe Lightroom is now a free download because the program is in the beta stage, but smoothly functional as far as it goes. If you are on a Windows platform this option will become available within several months. The next best thing is www.theimagingfactory.com Convert to Black and White Pro. I have the program as a Photoshop plugin and it is excellent; however, I just checked their website for you and they do not say whether it is compatible with Photoshop Elements 4. Possibly it needs certain tools with which to function that Elements does not have. Best is to go to their website and contact them to ask.

[DarkPenguin]

One of these should work with PSE ...

http://www.optikvervelabs.com/

or the black and white plugin found at http://www.photo-plugins.com/

The Russel Brown method uses two saturation layers rather than the channel mixer.  One can do that in PSE.  (Google for it.)

[Vesa]

One of these should work with PSE ...

http://www.optikvervelabs.com/

or the black and white plugin found at http://www.photo-plugins.com/

The Russel Brown method uses two saturation layers rather than the channel mixer.  One can do that in PSE.  (Google for it.)
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=58543\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Thanks so much...this was very helpfull.

[situgrrl]

I currently use ACR for developing E1 files because the Olympus software appears to be an unfinished school project.  Someone else on this forum was recently saying that they hated ACR for their Olympus but thought it was great for their Canon (or something else..)

I've no experience of other RAW convertors because they cost more ££ than I've got.  I've recently started importing at 16 bit and find that there is much much more colour information to play with.  I don't know whether elements supports 16 bit.

I've found that the files once in PS require LOTS of USM.  Scott Kelby's CSII for photographers recommends 150% as a practical maximum under most conditions but I've found myself sharpening up to 170% as a matter of course and sometimes over 200%.

Bibble has just announced that it will ship Noise Ninja with it's software and this is very interesting to me; I often am forced to use the ISO boost and the Olympus's are renouned for their noise.  I've found no way of solving it without resorting to NN and I can't afford it at the moment.  If it's combined with a better RAW convertor then I'll give it a proper look.  If not, I'll get NN as soon as I can!

Regarding b&w conversion, I've used Channel Mixer for a few years but have recently found that converting to LAB colour and deleting the appropriate channel before tweaking levels/curves and then resetting to RGB gives a punchier result more akin to film. YMMV but it works for me!  

I think there is a big debate about this in one of the other rooms at the moment

[dbell]

The only thing I can say about approaches to B&W conversion is that no one approach works for all of my images. Most of the time, I'm happy with Convert to B&W Pro. At other times, I need to make careful adjustments to each channel to get what I want (the channel mixer thus being the right approach) and some images work best if I use the Calculations tool to handle the conversion. Rarely do simple Desaturations produce tonality that I like. All of this is very individual, but what's cool about it is the amount of control and range of choices available. I doubt that with every combination of film, paper and developer ever made that we had the flexibility that one piece of software gives us today.


--
Daniel Bell