Post to black and white??

[almaass]

Hey everyone. I love this picture of my wife and son. I have tried to convert it to black and white, but for some reason it just doesnt look right to me. Would anyone like to take a stab at it for me? I would like to compare it to mine. Thanks.

 

[~Stella~]

Does this look any better?

 

[almaass]

looks great...this is the one i did...seems a bit dark now. Here is mine.

 

[~Stella~]

OK, this is what I did in about 2 min. I added contrast. I use PSE, so I upped it I think to 16. But you can't do that with white-whites in the shot or they blow out. So before I added contrast, I highlit the white whites on the shirts using the magic selector wand thingie and then chose "select...inverse" and then added contrast to everything but the white-whites.

Then I went to her face, generously selected her eyes and removed shadows AND added a litle more contrast. I did the same with baby.

If you convert to B&W, unless you add some contrast, you have too much bland greyscale for most shots. You need to up the contrast to add interest and to make skin not "wierd" looking.

I have no doubt better conversions can be done, but that's my 2-minute attempt.

 

[mikemicki]

Beautiful picture I must say. Now here are 2 I tried my hand at. The 1st one is my attempt at making it look antique. 2nd is an attempt at high-key black & white.

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[Mgw189]

Here is my take on it. I cropped out some of the stuff on the left of the shot. There was just to much space over there. Personally I REALLY like the color shot better. I used Gimp and Picasa to convert this shot. In Gimp I made a levels and curves adjustment until I thought the color version looked right. Then saved and used Picasa to crop and convert to B&W. I like Picasa for the conversion because I can do a filtered B&W pretty easily.

 

[almaass]

thanks so much.... i used levels and curves also... i just wante a fresh set of eyes on it. thanks again so much. i have learned so much from everyone on here. thanks again.

 

[lockwood81]

My go at it with PS Elements and Noiseware.

 

[manaheim]

I poked around with it and came up pretty close to MGW's edit. The big problem for me in this shot is that the framing just feels weird... even if you crop out a lot on the left, it just feels very wrong to me the way it is. I wound up cropping it down so it was a nice portrait with your wife's head in the top 1/3 of the frame.

I also turned it a bit so the stairs ran more or less flat on the vertical... they're way slanted currently.

Oh, I'll just upload it... here...

I also sharpened it slightly, but I might airbrush your baby's face just a hair and I think I'd crop it so it would fit a normal frame.

BTW, all editing and critique aside, I think it's a really nice picture. Definitely a keeper.