Fence: Color and B&W conversion. I'd love some C&C please!

[jwbryson1]

Thanks for looking. Simple shot of a fence near my house. Converted to B&W in Lightroom.

1. Original in color

[/URL] Fence Color by jwbryson1, on Flickr[/IMG]



2. B&W conversion

[/URL] Fence B&W by jwbryson1, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[nycphotography]

To me the b&w conversion works because the in original, the brown fence gets lost in the brownish green grass.

I may try brightening the green and darkening the other two channels to see if I could get more separation in the conversion.

 

[Bo4key]

I prefer the b&w as well but personally, I'd like to see some more contrast. It really doesn't have a lot of "black".

 

[KmH]

2. B&W conversion

[/URL] [/IMG]

The color image is under exposed by about .5 of a stop. (Note the histogram)
In Lightroom, instead of using the Exposure slider to add exposure, increase the Clarity slider down in the Presence section of the Basic panel instead. That will boost the mid-tones.
Use the 8 color sliders in the B&W section of the HSL/Color/B&W panel to manipulate the density of each of the 8 sliders. I lowered the green, blue, and magenta - raised the red and yellow- and left the cyan alone.
I also burned the fence and other local spots.

 

[jwbryson1]

Bump.

I like Keith's edits but I'm not sure I'm 100% on board with all of his changes. Thoughts?

 

[paigew]

Ill give it a go! Brb

 

[jwbryson1]

The color image is under exposed by about .5 of a stop. (Note the histogram)

Funny. The histogram in LR3 shows the color image perfectly exposed.

 

[amolitor]

Exposure looks fine to me. It looks like a lightly overcast day, things should look a bit dreary and bland.

Keith's edit is a little over the top, to my eye. He's done a great job of separating the fence from the grasses behind, which definitely is something that needs to be improved over the original (in my opinion, etc) but I think he's pushed it too far. The separation should be enough to give visual clarity, but without looking weird. The bright white grass and the dark grey fence looks weird, to me. Grass isn't white, and if it's not really white it must be brightly lit, and where the heck is the light coming from that's magically illuminating only the grass?

Still, as an illustration of technique, it's excellent.

B&W conversion is something that we're obsessing over these days, a bit much. The advent of digital has given us gigantic panel of sliders and options that can be used to alter the conversion, so now we're developing Theories and Standards and Ideas, and one of the things people like to ***** about in other people's photographs is how awful their B&W conversion is. This is 99% a crock, and about 1% about not creating visual confusion with overlapping similar tonal values.

I prefer the original since it lets the middle tones breathe more. The shadows (or rather, lack thereof) suggest a lightly overcast day, so in order to feel right, I feel that the image needs to be subtle, grey, bordering on gloomy without quite going there. Keith's popped contrasty image goes too far, and loses that grey-day feeling. The result is another dimension of weirdness, which is 'why is this so high contrast? where are the shadows created by the hard light that's making this contrast? what's going oooooon?'

Higher contrast IS the fashion these days. Our eyes are taught by what we see, so others are likely to accept the higher contrast image as "natural looking" where I do not. I only relate what I see, how I react, and what the image makes ME feel, and I recognize (and so should you) that my taste and visual training is a bit dated.

 

[paigew]

here is my try

it seems extra sharp...a little hdr ish. Did you add a lot of clarity to the color version?

I raised exposure. Bumped highlights and blacks. Then did med contrast curves and deepened shadows + raised highlights and whites more.

 

[paigew]

fwiw...I prefer the original color.

 

[jwbryson1]

I like your edit, Paige. I raised the clarity a bit in the original but not to an extreme. Your edit looks good because it has better black and more contrast.

Amolitor, good comments. Thanks for the feedback.