How do you like to do your B&W?

[apples]

I've tried playing around with ACR and changing it to greyscale and messing with the sliders. Wanting to see and learn some of you guys' techniques.

So, in PS or whatever program you use for PP, how do you do your B&W conversions?

 

[480sparky]

 

[chuasam]

AlienSkin Exposure 4 for the win

 

[The_Traveler]

I do all the corrections in exposure, color, etc in the color version, then use a b&w layer to convert, then might use a curves layer to fix the tonality and sometimes even send the resulting bw through Efex Pro for some of the grainy effects.

 

[bhop]

B&W film..

Although for the rare times I convert digital, I use Alien Skin Exposure just because it's easy...

 

[sandraadamson]

Nik software silver feed pro 2 absolutely love it.

www.sandraadamson.com www.sandraadamson.blogspot.com

 

[Derrel]

I like my B&W shaken--not stirred.

NO, but seriously, I use the Gradient Map method most of the time.

 

[KmH]

I do B&W conversions in both ACR (Camera Raw/Lightroom) and in CS5, but mostly in CS5 because CS5 gives me so many more options.

 

[gsgary]

In camera with 120 HP5/FP4/Tri-X

 

[gsgary]

Digital i use this method Gorman-Holbert Conversion Method

 

[Dubious Drewski]

There are a hundred good ways to do B&W conversion, but I prefer Photoshop's channel mixer. It's easy and very powerful (especially if you choose from the presets). And because it's added as a layer, you can fade the effect of the conversion, you can play with blending modes and you can emphasize certain colours if you prefer. For example, here is a photo I took in colour, then used channel mixer with an emphasis on the yellow channel. This gave me a good tones in the rocks. I then added some contrast with a curves layer and added a sepia effect with a colour balance layer.

 

[Skaperen]

I don't use PS (yet ... I might some day). But I have done some PP based on a few Linux tools, or my own programming.

I often do conversion to black and white by simply taking just the green channel and calling it my B&W. That gets me close to the color filtering typically done with green filters. But digital PP is so much more powerful, there is usually little reason to use color filters on digital pictures as one might do on film (if it is B&W film, that's your last opportunity to adjust the color balance).

 

[Sw1tchFX]

Tri-X pushed to 1600, developed in coffee.

 

[michaeljamesphoto]

Definitely Ilford film. I like Tri-x as well, but Ilford has definitely been my favorite.
I played around with converting some color images, but only to split-tone in PS. It was Provia film anyway, so still not digital haha

 

[Rosy]

I like my B&W shaken--not stirred.

NO, but seriously, I use the Gradient Map method most of the time.

can you share what steps you do