Tree At Edge Of Field

[Greg McCary]

Gary is right that channel mixer is the way to go. Pushing levels and curves to far creates all sorts of grain. Also hitting exposure dead on helps in the conversion. It works best if you have the exposure between the sky and ground right before you ever start. If you are not using filters you might invest in a couple. Get as much right in the field before you ever get your picture to the computer.

[Xia_Ke]

Anytime you start editing your pictures, especially with hard edits like pushing the levels and contrasts, you will start breaking down the file and seeing banding, noise, artifacts etc.
Try to do everything you can in 16 bit color depth. I think PS 7 offers b&w conversion through channels mixer in 16 bit. I know CS2 offers lots of functions in 16 bit. I'm not familiar with LightRoom yet. I would imagine it would offer lots offunctions in 16 bit. Most importantly, keep the edits within moderation so as not to go to the point of seeing unwanted side effects.
I liked your original conversion best, without the dark sky.

Hi Gary, these were shot as RAW files and edited as such in Lightroom. Images were then export as JPEGs to be resized in Photoshop. I guess the biggest thing I need to keep in mind is "moderation", like you mentioned. I like dark, high contrast b&w's but, I do know that I have a tendency to over do things

Gary is right that channel mixer is the way to go. Pushing levels and curves to far creates all sorts of grain. Also hitting exposure dead on helps in the conversion. It works best if you have the exposure between the sky and ground right before you ever start. If you are not using filters you might invest in a couple. Get as much right in the field before you ever get your picture to the computer.

Hi Gary, as mentioned above, the conversions were done in Lightroom. When I did my conversions in Photoshop before, I could never quite get it the way that I liked it with the channel mixers. Mostly I used to use a black and white gradient map, adjust the black and white points, and then adjust contrast levels. I thought I was doing alright with my exposures on the original shots. Maybe you could make recommendations otherwise I attached the originals to this post for comparison.


THANKS AGAIN FOR ALL YOUR HELP EVERYONE! THIS IS TURNING INTO QUITE THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE

[Xia_Ke]

Also, I stopped today and snapped another few shots. I tried playing with my DOF a bit too. Didn't quite have the effect I was hoping for. Was trying for a blurry foreground, fading to an in focus tree. Getting back to b&w conversion, below is the original shot, a shot with just a straight grayscale conversion in Lightroom with no other adjustment, and finally a fully adjusted one. Any thoughts, recommendations, etc?

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO EDIT ANY SHOTS IN THIS THREAD. I ONLY ASK YOU EXPLAIN HOW AND WHY YOU EDITED THE WAY YOU DID.

Thanks again everyone!!!

[gahspidy]

Aaron, these are a couple of examples of the conversion I'm getting at. These two pictures that i got from your post did not hold up very well to the conversion, but a full resolution file, especially done in 16 bit should hold up with no problems.
In both pictures I converted to b&w using the channels mixer with a setting of
Red channel 80
Green channel 30
Blue channel -10
The reason for the boost in the green channel is to bring out the green areas of the tree, and a slight reduction in blue channel to darken the blue sky a bit.
Then I did a curves adjustment using a mild S-curve to enhance the overall contrast.
On the horizontal picture, I increased the canvas size and added more foreground to the bottom and a little more space to the left of the tree, both using the cloning brush.
You mentioned that you were trying to get a blurry fg with a sharp tree. I would have focused halfway between the tree and the bottom of the frame with a small aperture 11 or so because the tree will still come out looking quite sharp and then the benefit of having that textured dried grass sharp will be a real treat.
I still like the framing and comp of the original picture you posted in this thread. i would try for that again, but lay on the ground so as to get the tree up over the trees in the background. A dramatic sky or a puffy cloud would be a boost as well.