Noise in black and white

Fox Paw

TPF Noob!
Joined
Jun 3, 2008
Messages
670
Reaction score
0
Location
Arizona
Can others edit my Photos
Photos OK to edit
When I convert an outdoor shot to black and white using channel mixer, I often get a lot of noise in the sky. This seems to happen most with early morning or dusk shots. It's there before I start tweaking the channels. Am I doing something wrong?
 
Are you shooting RAW or jpeg?

It seems that I have this problem when I try to "push" one channel too far- minor adjustments are okay, but past a certain threshold quality starts to degrade rapidly. I found it seemed better in RAW.

Don't forget that what is undesirable "noise" in color can turn to desirable "grain" in black and white. I sometimes shoot higher ISO than I would ever use for color (past 800 is completely unusable on my camera) when I'm planning on final output in black and white because I know it can be a pleasing effect.
 
Thanks for the response. I'm shooting in RAW now, but I had the same issue when I was shooting in jpeg. I know what you mean about pushing the channels too far but I get this at standard levels. Not a huge issue...maybe it's unavoidable.
 
Post an example: color and b&w.
 
It shows up here, although it's less apparent after Photobucket compresses the image.

Cabinsample.jpg


Cabinsamplebw.jpg
 
I don't have a solution to the problem, but can shed some insight to the noise removal. The noise removal filter works well on skys since you can use maximum strenght and not preserve the details since sky has very little detail from sharp edges anyways.
 

Most reactions

Back
Top