A bit of advise please.

[Grandpa Ron]

I have been chasing my tail trying to do a color to black and white conversion.

I am pretty much an "as shot" person so most of my b&w conversions are simply to desaturate and a few minor curve tweaks to improve the contrast and exposure but this one has me stumped. No pun intended.

I shot this old tree in color, so my first move was to desaturate. I notice the leaves were too light, almost like snow. So I adjusted the curve to improve the lighter sunlit shades but it still looked too bright. I have tried numerous other attempts including adding color filters to the color print then desaturating. They all looked artificial to me.

I am working with GIMP and beginning to wonder if I am trying to see in black and white, what is not there. Any suggestions would be welcome.







View attachment 179986 View attachment 179987

 

[dxqcanada]

Your links are broken

 

[dxqcanada]

... and what App are you using ?

 

[Tropicalmemories]

Can't see the image - but generally desaturation is not the ideal way to convert to monochrome. You can lose the high contrast and subtle tones that's often needed to make a good black and white image.

Most editing programs have a black and white conversion option, some with options for color filters.

I generally boost contrast a little before conversion, and choose a color filter that will help to make the subject stand out.

Anything in the image with a similar color to the filter will appear a little brighter.

 

[smoke665]

I shot this old tree in color, so my first move was to desaturate. I notice the leaves were too light, almost like snow. So I adjusted the curve to improve the lighter sunlit shades but it still looked too bright. I have tried numerous other attempts including adding color filters to the color print then desaturating. They all looked artificial to me.

In B&W tonal contrast is everything, a wide or high tonal contrast contains areas with both black or very dark and extreme bright or white, makes for a stronger image. One thing that might be throwing you is that bright colors like greens, reds, blues, yellows, can fool you into seeing color contrast, not tonal differences. If all the elements are only bright colors like red, green, yellow, blue you will end up with an image with only bright tones of grey when you convert, and a rather flat image. Sometimes you can move to get a different viewpoint, so you're shooting a brightly colored subject against a darker background

These types of scenes are a place where you need to use the histogram. From your image you can see the data shows maxed out data in the highlights, less in the shadows, and almost none in the black.

Based on the colors in your image and this histogram, I would have expected your conversion to turn out as it did. Colors convert to different dark or bright grey tones in a black and white. Red, violet, and blue will convert to darker tones, while orange, yellow, and green will convert into rather bright tones. If you keep that in mind when you compose your shot, you'll be ahead of the game on contrast range in post

Back in the old days of film, it was common to use filters on your lens to make colors appear lighter or darker, to adjust your tonal contrast range. For example using a yellow filter will make blue and violet appear darker, because yellow is opposite on the color wheel.

I'm not familiar with how gimp works, but in Lr, it's fairly easy to apply the same effect in the HSL panel adjusting the corresponding sliders.

Lastly unless you just have to do it, avoiding midday sun is always a good idea, as it tends to create a flat image anyhow.

 

[Grandpa Ron]

Smoke,

Thanks for the details. As you mentioned, I think this is one those times when the considering the B&W outcome, starts before pushing the shutter.

 

[dxqcanada]

Hmm, found this: Perfect black and white, Gimp tutorial
Results look good ... this is kinda what I do in LR, and how Smoke describes.

 

[smoke665]

Smoke,

Thanks for the details. As you mentioned, I think this is one those times when the considering the B&W outcome, starts before pushing the shutter.

And if you're not thrilled with editing anyhow you could always just do it in camera. Most now have a B&W or Monochrome mode.

 

[vintagesnaps]

I've been shooting B&W film for years, and have done B&W digital images too. I've had some accepted into juried exhibits and hanging on a wall (so I figure I must be doing something right...). It often starts before I go out to take photos thinking and noticing how the sun and shadows look; I've sometimes changed my mind on what film I'm going to use before I go out the door (because it's gotten hazy/cloudy, etc.). So yeah, you probably are right you needed to think about it before you released the shutter.

But I also have been out taking photos with my digital camera and gotten something good that had a lot of nice contrast and decided to do it in B&W. I go into Photoshop and use Remove Color, not the preprogrammed conversion. But that seems to take getting proper exposures, and seeing the light. Maybe that just takes years of experience.

With the tree photo I see a lot of light and medium tones, and not much dark; the tree trunk and shade is all that would likely be black. Maybe with an adjustment to the exposure, or framing differently to get more of the shade, it could've worked better. You can't put in what isn't there... if there's not much dark or contrast then there's not going to be much variety of grays or much black.

 

[vintagesnaps]

And I'm lately reading misconceptions about monochrome - that's ONE color, B&W is an absence of color. When I do cyanotypes those are blue and white, that's monochromatic. (And according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, it means one color or hue.)

 

[Grandpa Ron]

Coming from the film years, the term Black and White included the sepia and other colors used on the photo paper print.

With the passage of time and the advent of digital, words like monochrome, ISO, post processing etc. have come into vogue. That is fine, language is always evolving.

However, for some of us it is still, a gas pedal, an icebox and a stove. Semantics is not one of my strong points.

 

[dxqcanada]

Hmm, took your image and played with colour sliders (especially blue) and contrast adjustment in LR ... though it does look like an infrared film influence (I miss that type of film).
<Artifacts due to working with jpeg>

 

[Tim Tucker 2]

See in B&W, but *think* in colour...

We associate a luminosity with hue, that is, we do not see colour as having equal luminosity and we do not see luminosity of colour in absolute values. The eye very much sees yellow - yellow/green as far brighter than blue. If you remove colour then you remove the perceptual brightness of colour.

Now you don't have to preserve this as a rigid rule, but it's worth remembering it when shooting B&W or doing conversions. So many B&W you see on some forums are just reduced to contrast, there seems to be no appreciation that even in the absence of colour we still expect to see the luminosity we associate with colour, and we expect luminosity to relate to our perception or memory of the colour of say grass or leaves. It's a mistake to think only in terms of detail and contrast, think in terms of colour and the perceptual luminosity of colour as well.

B&W film or the silver halide emulsion is sensitive to blue, and though modified to a more pan-chromatic spectrum it still retains an over sensitivity to blue. Usually a +1/3 stop yellow will correct this and provide a luminosity of colour that's more consistent with our perception, so for me it's a standard correction filter and not a *sky* filter.

Digital conversions are a little different as they seem to have a perceptual quality programmed into either the conversion or in parts of the editing suite. This is the main reason why simple *de-saturation* commands don't give good results, they don't preserve the perceptual brightness of colour but instead seem to preserve the absolute recorded luminosity.

Here's an image that exaggerates this because the yellow is quite over-saturated, saturated colours aren't really bright colours and it's only because it's yellow you see it as bright:

This is what happens if I do a simple de-saturate, which preserves actual rather than perceptual luminosity:

Kind of mucks up the green and yellow. Because the colour is missing so is your tendency to see yellow - yellow/green as brighter colours.

Here is what happens if I dial the vibrance right back and de-saturate:

It's a little better because a de-saturated yellow is brighter, it has more reflected light, but still not quite right and still doesn't really reflect the impression of sunlight.

Now this is what happens if I use PS and a B&W conversion layer which allows me to adjust the luminosity of colours. Which I've done in line with perceptual brightness and made the yellow - yellow/green the brightest while holding back the blue a touch:

Like so:

Hope this visual helps.

 

[smoke665]

This is what happens if I do a simple de-saturate, which preserves actual rather than perceptual luminosity:

Valid point as there is a tendency for many to simply desaturate an image to convert to B&W, an excellent visual as to why that doesn't work.

One thing missed in seeing in B&W is that complimentary colors when placed next to each other will create strong contrast. In your example had the flowers been red they would have created the contrast. Analogous colors like green and yellow register to close on contrast. Even though you're shooting B&W you still need to consider color theory.

 

[Grandpa Ron]

dxqcanada I like that rendition.

We discussed working RAW and various post processing programs at our camera club meetings. For us beginners, that is going pretty far down the rabbit hole to speak. However one cannot deny the results when one knows that they are doing.

Thanks for the post, I provides a lot of encouragement.