Not Happy With My B&W's

Fajitas!

Hmmm, I've been meaning to post this for a while.

Of late I've been really unhappy with the quality of my (digital) black and white processing. For some reason I was always happier with it before, but now it seems I'm caught in a world of greys, and feel they have gotten quite bland.

It's gotten to the point where I'm not doing many B&W's, even though it would suit some of the shots a lot... And I end up making photos into lightly saturated images because I'm not happy with the tones I'm getting in monotones. If they're contrasty, I feel there's not enough tones in the image, and if there's a wider tonal range, I feel the iamge might as well be grey and grey.

Anyone want to help? Show me where I'm making my mistakes? Restore my confidence?

Should I just use the rest of the 35mm and 120mm film I've been hoarding in the fridge?

elven

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fajitasgtr/954480509/

Do you jest, sir?

Which shots would you be talking about? Think we need examples.

I always had you down as the bloke who wasn't scared of pure white and pure black, and you made the mono shots I wanted to...

GristlyEnd

Showing us examples of what you are not happy with would be a good start. I had a quick look at your flickr and they are damn good as usual.

Fajitas!

Aye, but I feel that shot to be too contrasted. There was some beautiful mid tones in there, that I couldn't get out, because I wanted the hardness of the bricks coming through aswell.

The B&W shot I've been happiest with in a long while is this one but others such as this, this and suprisingly this (Which has had some colour restored) don't do it for me, they come accross weak I think.

Some months ago, I feel I could have processed a much stronger B&W image out of the above.

Edit: And for the record, there's a lot more filling up my hard drive that I haven't put up on Flickr.

magicbastarder

i'd agree that that graffiti shot is a bit too contrasty. pulling in the contrast using curves seems to improve it.

Fionn

maybe your trying to hard!!

or just being too technical

being too self critical

or

any of the above


stop doing them for a bit perhaps, and take a break from it - do something else for a while!

Fajitas!

Cheers Magicbastarder, I've not been using curves as often at all in a while, something I must get back into doing.

Fionn wrote:

stop doing them for a bit perhaps, and take a break from it - do something else for a while!

Heh! Problem is, I have 2 jobs processing at the moment, one wants half colour, half B&W, the other wants predominently B&W and sepia

ThOnda

Every single picture is different. I really love that "Dublin..." but without the sky. The tones in the picture are fantastic. There is whole range of grey. Superb.
There is no rule in your head what to do. Try your best and begin with the simpliest adjustments. Don't fire your heaviest ammunition in form of latest processing skills!!!
And what I had learned is - get some distance. The best thing about film is, that I was (and I am) lazy. Lazy to develop films, lazy to make contact prints, lazy to make selections for prints...
If you are not in a hurry and picutres are for your own use, keep the distance. I like seeing all my pictures about one year after shooting. That's the time I need to get rid of my personal feelings and memories.
There's nothing wrong with you. Download files to DVD, burn it and use only what you have to use. Put it in your archive and have a look at it in future, In a week, in a month...
That's the only think I can tell you. Errr, write you ;-)

Fionn

oh!! your in a pickle so!!

as long as the client is happy enough i suppose you can be unhappy about them till you get the mojo back!!

Muineach

With my post processing I can get too "into it", I find I keep going at a photo until I think it's "done", leave it for a few days and take another look at it. I tend to find myself concentrating on one particular area the first time, then on the second/third viewing I tend to pick up on other things.
So for me, I do a first pass, then a second a few days later, repeat and rinse :rolleyes:

rymus

Fionn wrote:

as long as the client is happy enough i suppose you can be unhappy about them till you get the mojo back!!

I would have said the same. With a paid job, your priority is to make the client happy. When you're doing stuff for yourself, your priority is to make yourself happy. Even if that means you have to churn out work that you wouldn't hang on your own walls, what does it matter as long as your client is doing back flips with happiness?

I realise that you're sacrificing your own standards in order to get work done within a timeframe... but time is money as the fella says. Clients won't wait around for too long while you pontificate over a few prints that you're not quite happy with. As I've seen many times before, the average Joe wont have a balls notion about what work has gone into processing a photo. You could give them a jpeg straight out of the camera and they'd think it's a work of art.

So... don't be so hard on yourself (for the paid jobs at least). When you process stuff for yourself, be as hard as you like. I suggest whipping yourself with a reed across the backs of your bare legs.

Muineach

rymus wrote:

So... don't be so hard on yourself (for the paid jobs at least). When you process stuff for yourself, be as hard as you like. I suggest whipping yourself with a reed across the backs of your bare legs.

If you going the whole hog, go for a Cilice (da vinci code style)
, plus you still have 2 hands free to take more pictures

rymus

aye, that'd do it alright...

nilhg

Fajitas! wrote:

Heh! Problem is, I have 2 jobs processing at the moment, one wants half colour, half B&W, the other wants predominently B&W and sepia

I know it is not quite the artistic thing to rely on presets, but if you need to get through stuff quickly, between the ones that come with Lightroom and the free ones from here it should be possible to produce something acceptable at a reasonable pace.

The thing I like about these presets is that you can see all the adjustments made and can build up a understanding of what will work in a given situation.

It should be possible to use the settings in ACR also if thats your preference.

JMcL

Are you doing your primary B&W conversions in Lightroom, or with the channel mixer in PS? I've abandoned the latter (I haven't played with LAB conversions admittedly), as I find Lightroom more powerful and feel I get better results.

A couple of things to try, on the offchance you're not already:

- Playing with white balance and tint can have beneficial effects on B&W images in Lightroom (or I suppose ACR)
- I'll bracket and/or process an image 2 or more times and combine them with layer masks to get areas looking the way I want them.

Taking the Youghal beach shot you posted as an example, I think it would benefit from this (though it does look a lot better at a bigger size on the black background). Looking at the histogram, it does have midtones in spades, but it looks a bit flat overall. I'd go for more contrast there, and not worry too much about how the histogram looks (well, within reason )

Duchovny

Well i know its not the same but what i usualy do, is a take the picture in color and use photoshop to make it B&W like this i have always both and give me more room to play arround

440Hz

I use 4 techniques for bw conversion and im almost always happy with the results. I decide which technique to use based on the colour content of the image I am going to work on. I think we chatted about this before Al did we?

I don't think it is enough to have one process of conversion. Every shot is different and should be treated differently when it comes to conversion.

Morlar

One technique I find handy is to copy out the red channel as a new layer - set it to invisible. Then copy out the green channel also as a new layer leave it invisible.
Then set the red to be visible and merge the red and the original background layer to get a red channel b/w conversion.

Then set the green channel to be visible and apply a layer mask and paint in the parts of it that you want - this works for say if you want to brighten a single building in a composition while keeping a dark sky.

Fajitas!

I only want my best going into my work

I've been so annoyed with some shots, I have been relying on the Lightroom presets of late. Usually, I'd leave the image in colour when exporting from LR, and convert to B&W in PS.

I've been playing with multiple contrast adjustment layers as opposed to processing an image 2 or more times and combining them with layer masks. And have been playing around with WB too...

Ah, I'll dive back in tomorrow night and see what comes out...

Morlar's technique looks interesting...

ThOnda

Fajitas - there are two more options. The first one is, that the light was too bad to get close to your imagined picture. And the second one is - the picture itslef is crap :-)
But I think that the latter possibility is not very possible. I hope... ;-)

Muineach

I've found out by accident of course, that duplicating adjustment layers, so they apply 2 of the same curves on the image can improve a photo, same with all adjustment layers. It's probably due to my inexperience of PS though, its worth a try now and again :rolleyes:

prox

ThOnda wrote:

Fajitas - there are two more options. The first one is, that the light was too bad to get close to your imagined picture.

What an extraordinary concept.