Re: the best black and white conversion ever?

[Rob Miracle <rob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

herschel wrote:

If you’re using CS3 there’s a specific, purpose-made, black and white converter (Image menu> Adjustments> Black & White

 

Shift+ctrl+alt+B

(Based on the channel mixer but far more intuitive and less prone to burning out or blocking up.)

What hershel wrote . . .   but I wanted to add a few things.....

First, not only can you do the B&W conversion that way, its also available as an adjustment layer which leaves your original background image intact.  For those who prefer to use adjustment layers than directly affecting the image, this is the way to go.

Secondly, the B&W Conversion tool has presets that mimic standard photographic filters, such as a red filter, green filter, yellow filter, etc.  or you can fine tune it using sliders for not only rgb, but cmy as well.

The B&W conversion tool also has simple toning mode that defaults to sepia.  Very handy.


Of course you also have the old rip the Luminance channel out of the image in LAB mode, rip an individual R, G, or B channel.  The channel mixer is still there as is convert to greyscale and desaturate.

If your into other tools, Bibble, a great RAW processing tool that also works with JPEGs has built in B&W conversions that mimic specific films printed on certain papers (and you can buy a lot more paper/film combinations).  

Rob

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Rob Miracle
rob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.robmiracle.com