You mean, like, seriously? YOU want editing tips from ME?
My day has suddenly got a lot better. That's quite an honour, Bella.
Well, the pictures you've seen over the past few days have been a mixture of genuine black and whites and converted colour photos. When I work with black and whites, I convert them from greyscale to RGB Colour before I start editing, as this will allow colour-toning later on. When I convert colour pictures to black and white, I do so through the channel mixer, although I've heard there are more sophisticated ways of going about it. Either way, the rest of the process is the same. I first set the level and play with contrasts. With my Cologne photos, I've noticed that turning the contrast up 10 points/per cent/whatever the right word is and turning the brightness down 10 points worked really well, possibly because it was very sunny when I took the pictures. Then I use Curves (which I love), and when I'm done, I colorise the picture using Ctrl-U. I generally use tone no. 49 (sepia) and desaturate that to anywhere between 8 and 12 points. Desaturating to 8 points gives you the light tone you see in today's middle picture; the other two came in at 11 or 12, I think. I guess 10 is about perfect.
hahaha Elaine, you're too funny! Of course I'm being serious. I'm floored at the black and whites you've been posting lately.
Have you looked at my journal archives? Have you seen many BWs in there? No! They're mostly all blazing colour, because I haven't found a BW method I'm happy with. I was complaining to my photographer friend earlier about it too (along with the fact that I have yet to master the burn tool).
This is the kind of answer I was looking for, yep!
Floored at the black and whites I've been posting? Wow. I'm flattered beyond words now.
No, I haven't seen many black and whites in your archives. I do, however, remember seeing one colorised black-and-white in your archives which absolutely floored me -- the one of you putting on lipstick in a little hand mirror. I assume it was a desaturated colour photo to which you added some red, rather than a genuine black and white with some red thrown in. Either way, it looked like a superb Photoshop effort to me, so I assumed you knew all about colorising black-and-white photos. I'm surprised to find out you didn't.
Anyhow, now that I've told you my secrets, you realise I'm expecting gorgeous black and whites from you, yes? :-)
My day has suddenly got a lot better. That's quite an honour, Bella.
Well, the pictures you've seen over the past few days have been a mixture of genuine black and whites and converted colour photos. When I work with black and whites, I convert them from greyscale to RGB Colour before I start editing, as this will allow colour-toning later on. When I convert colour pictures to black and white, I do so through the channel mixer, although I've heard there are more sophisticated ways of going about it. Either way, the rest of the process is the same. I first set the level and play with contrasts. With my Cologne photos, I've noticed that turning the contrast up 10 points/per cent/whatever the right word is and turning the brightness down 10 points worked really well, possibly because it was very sunny when I took the pictures. Then I use Curves (which I love), and when I'm done, I colorise the picture using Ctrl-U. I generally use tone no. 49 (sepia) and desaturate that to anywhere between 8 and 12 points. Desaturating to 8 points gives you the light tone you see in today's middle picture; the other two came in at 11 or 12, I think. I guess 10 is about perfect.
Is that roughly what you wanted to hear...? :-)
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Have you looked at my journal archives? Have you seen many BWs in there? No! They're mostly all blazing colour, because I haven't found a BW method I'm happy with. I was complaining to my photographer friend earlier about it too (along with the fact that I have yet to master the burn tool).
This is the kind of answer I was looking for, yep!
Reply
No, I haven't seen many black and whites in your archives. I do, however, remember seeing one colorised black-and-white in your archives which absolutely floored me -- the one of you putting on lipstick in a little hand mirror. I assume it was a desaturated colour photo to which you added some red, rather than a genuine black and white with some red thrown in. Either way, it looked like a superb Photoshop effort to me, so I assumed you knew all about colorising black-and-white photos. I'm surprised to find out you didn't.
Anyhow, now that I've told you my secrets, you realise I'm expecting gorgeous black and whites from you, yes? :-)
Reply
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