My attempt at a B&W for C&C...Feral cat

[Texas Aggie]

I really like black and white photos but I've been having trouble achieving B&W like I want in Photoshop. It's kind of frustrating. I've finally just been trying to download various actions to see if they are any better and haven't found a real good one yet.

Anyways, here's a picture of a feral cat I took last weekend that I've been messing around with in Photoshop:

What do you all do/use for your black and whites? Any tips are appreciated. Thanks

 

[d burg]

whatever you did for that black and white is great. I love this shot.

 

[Live_free]

Looks blown out above left eye. Also it would more interesting if the cats eyes were open. What I often love to do with black and white photos is pump the black levers and saturation.

 

[BlackDog]

I like the pic and don't mind that his eyes are closed. It looks like he is soaking in some sun. I would be interested in seeing this pic in color.

When I do BW I usually just use PS to change it to BW and then I tweak brightness and contrast as needed. Although some photos just don't look good in BW no matter what.

 

[RockstarPhotography]

niks software, Its a plugin for photoshop. lets you achieve amazing b&w with tons of presets already built in

 

[Texas Aggie]

Thanks for the tips so far. What I usually do is bring the saturation to 0, and then tweak with the contrast some...but sometimes they just look flat or something. I don't know...I just have trouble with it most of the time.

Here is the cat just cropped and relatively unedited with color if you are interested:

 

[WesternGuy]

As Rockstar has suggested, you might want to look at Nik Software's SilverEfex Pro 2. You can download it and try it for 15 days without buying it. You can find it here..

The World's Leading Black and White Software

They also have some training videos as well that will give you some idea as to how it is implemented and used. To my knowledge, it will work as plug-in to CS5 or in stand-alone mode.

There is also a Black and White forum here. You might want to post your image in that forum. It might get you a different audience and soem different comments.

Would you mind if others took a shot at it? Personally, I would like to see a bit more contrast, but that may not be possible given the results of the colour image.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

 

[ann]

Nik software is terrific, but before that I just used channel mixer method. There is a lot of info on this method on the internet and in many books

 

[Texas Aggie]

Would you mind if others took a shot at it? Personally, I would like to see a bit more contrast, but that may not be possible given the results of the colour image.

WesternGuy

By all means, have a go at it. I don't mind at all.

I've heard of Silver Efex before...isn't it around 200 dollars? That always seemed a little crazy that a plugin could be that high. I'm sure it's worth it though.

 

[ann]

nik is like working in a darkroom, if you have never had that experience then the learning curve takes a bit of time, but they have lots of videos to help you ..

Softare is not cheap, or, if it is , it is limiting in it's scope. there are free actions and others available that are not as expensive, but the control is also not as exact.
whatever software you have probably can do rgb channels and that is all you really need to get started. That a some weaking with curves.

 

[WesternGuy]

Would you mind if others took a shot at it? Personally, I would like to see a bit more contrast, but that may not be possible given the results of the colour image.

WesternGuy

By all means, have a go at it. I don't mind at all.

I've heard of Silver Efex before...isn't it around 200 dollars? That always seemed a little crazy that a plugin could be that high. I'm sure it's worth it though.

Thanks, I will try and see if I can have a go at it this weekend. You are right, Nik's Silver Efex Pro 2 is about $200.00, but if you attend one of their webinars on the product you can usually get 15% off - not much, but as my buddy says, "better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick" LOL. You can access a schedule of their webinars here...http://www.niksoftware.com/learnmore/usa/index.php...you just have to do a bit of searching for the one you want. I have their products Viveza 2 and HDR Efex Pro and that is how I bought them after attending a webinar, every bit of saving helps. Ann's point about software not being cheap is well taken. Good software very seldom is...but the two of their products that I do have, I find them just great - I don't use them all the time, but when I do need them, I am quite satisfied with the results I get. I guess, in the final analysis, it depends on how serious you want to get about black and white imaging. I suspect for now, that Photoshop will probably do everything that you need, but if you continue in this field, then I suspect you may outgrow it (CS5)...this is what happened to me as I got involved in HDR - CS5 was okay for a while, but I grew more and more disatisfied with the results, so I went and acquired HDR Efex Pro and Photomatix Pro 4 and I am now quite happy with the HDR results that I do get, not only that, these products have opened a whole other part of HDR processing that CS5 never would have, had I stuck with just using it. Anyway, enough of my ramblings - check out the Black and White thread in this forum and you will get a better idea of what people are doing and the software that folks are using, as there are other products out there, besides Silver Efex Pro 2, that do similar sorts of processing for B&W imaging - google "black and white software" and see what you get . HTH.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

 

[Texas Aggie]

Thanks, I will try and see if I can have a go at it this weekend. You are right, Nik's Silver Efex Pro 2 is about $200.00, but if you attend one of their webinars on the product you can usually get 15% off - not much, but as my buddy says, "better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick" LOL. You can access a schedule of their webinars here...http://www.niksoftware.com/learnmore/usa/index.php...you just have to do a bit of searching for the one you want. I have their products Viveza 2 and HDR Efex Pro and that is how I bought them after attending a webinar, every bit of saving helps. Ann's point about software not being cheap is well taken. Good software very seldom is...but the two of their products that I do have, I find them just great - I don't use them all the time, but when I do need them, I am quite satisfied with the results I get. I guess, in the final analysis, it depends on how serious you want to get about black and white imaging. I suspect for now, that Photoshop will probably do everything that you need, but if you continue in this field, then I suspect you may outgrow it (CS5)...this is what happened to me as I got involved in HDR - CS5 was okay for a while, but I grew more and more disatisfied with the results, so I went and acquired HDR Efex Pro and Photomatix Pro 4 and I am now quite happy with the HDR results that I do get, not only that, these products have opened a whole other part of HDR processing that CS5 never would have, had I stuck with just using it. Anyway, enough of my ramblings - check out the Black and White thread in this forum and you will get a better idea of what people are doing and the software that folks are using, as there are other products out there, besides Silver Efex Pro 2, that do similar sorts of processing for B&W imaging - google "black and white software" and see what you get . HTH.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

Thanks for the advice and the heads up on the webinars. If I ever take the plunge, I'll probably try for as much savings as possible. It's hard to put that 200 dollars towards an editing program instead of a new lens or something because I enjoy shooting a heck of a lot better than editing...but I really love the structure control of Silver Efex and how it can actually incorporate film grain INTO the picture to make it look authentic. I don't like how in Photoshop, when you add film grain it just adds a layer over it and it messes with the sharpness of the photo.

 

[thebutler4]

IMO this is a great shot .. other than I would prefer to see the eyes open. B&W (again IMO) really bring out the eyes in subjects. it will also bring out the facial features as well .. but I LOVE eyes in B&W photos ..

 

[AgentDrex]

You may want to change the title from Feral Cat to Cute Kitty...I don't see feral at all...it looks domesticated to me...cute kitten...but just that...a family photo of a pet cat...

 

[mikehaugen]

One thing that I have always wondered but have never experimented with yet because I don't do much b&w. Would you get better results shooing in b&w mode in-camera? Or does this essentially do the same thing that software does.. just de-saturate the colors. I know that with film photographing with b&w film will give better results then converting a color negative to b&w.