Here's my normal steps-

Open raw, adjust as normal. Usual steps from my 40d in ACR are:
contrast to +55-65ish
Sat +5-10
adjust other sliders as I see fit

Open file

Channel mixer, monochrome:
red 27%
green 36%
blue 37%

I don't really mess with anything else much, but should probably do some shadows/hilights or further brightness contrast stuff.

You probably don't want to hear this, Jay, but I'm going to wait and do a more in-depth tutorial, with its own thread, about how I convert to black and white.

I don't want to just throw it out there in 2min, because I think it deserves more time than that.

It's not complicated, but it deserves some explanation.

well...

can you at least say - "looks close" or "you're doing it wrong"?

My conversions are different for every photo.

The only constants are:

-I only adjust the RAW file for exposure, and I always shoot in RAW for b/w conversions, because in-camera JPEG processing screws up some things sometimes when converting
-Many times I adjust the contrast in my photos, either locally with unsharp mask, or overall with the contrast slider
-I start my b/w conversions with a b+w layer, a feature in CS3. You can use the channel mixer, but I find this much easier.
-I often use a red filter or a high contrast red filter as a starting point, but almost always adjust every channel to taste.
-I use a polarizer to get the dark skies... if you saw the color versions, you'd see that they all have very deep blue skies.

SLAP FIGHT!

Originally Posted by b84wm

SLAP FIGHT!

i actually use a variety of methods.

first, there are two plugins that i've grown to like for this:

power retouche's bw converter pro
b/w styler

second, there's a set of commands that utilize the LAB mode that i've made into an action. the commands can be found here: http://www.designbyfire.com/000100.html towards the bottom where it says The Rob Carr Color to B&W Conversion Technique.

My way is the best, no one else can even come close! J/K

I actually edit each of my images differently when converting to black and white. I have found that I can get an image to work very well by converting in ACR. Others I use the Black and White tool (new in CS3) in Photoshop.

I think it is a bad idea to use a similar approach with all of your conversions simply because different photos have different tones and certain techniques will not convert certain images as well as others.

But really, there is no right and wrong, if it works for you Jay, that is all that matters.

I do certain things the same and certain different. I'll have to play around more.

Originally Posted by thechickencow

I'll have to play around more.

I highly recommend that. Your wife may not. he he

I need to play with that B&W tool, never knew about it...

Anyway, I do my usual PP (shadows/highlights, brightness/contrast, hue/saturation, then noise ninja). From there I tweak the levels if needed. This is all for color or B+W so far. Then once I go B+W I use the channel mixer on it's default (30 30 40?). Then I run shadows/highlights AGAIN and see if that helps (usually it does) then I run brightness/contrast again, and usually go with some heavy numbers here to get the whites white with brightness, then add some contrast.

But no one comments on my conversions, so I'm doing something wrong I'm sure.

I think a lot of it comes from starting with a good shot - mark mentions using his polarizer, but the shots I've liked the best have come from shots with great range of contrast that turns into great range of dark/light.

Here I'm playing around a bit, 2 ones I just did:
Here's my old method that I described ^^:



And here's with teh b&w tool in cs3 just moved to what looked good:

Yes, Jay, it definitely helps to have a good candidate shot to begin with. I actively look for my black and whites, and look for contrast, textures, and tones that will work. That said, some of my color shots that I intend to be color convert well, and some of the b+w's turn out better in color, but what's great about digital is that's okay.

If you look through my zoo shots, some are much stronger than others. The lion shot, for example, I think is not great in b+w, but I wanted to keep the series consistent, so I converted it.

Originally Posted by jacobsen1

that's a great pic, daddy!

Here you go, Jay (and everyone else): http://www.newschoolofphotography.co...ead.php?t=6732