Color to B&W - What's the best way???

[mtbbrian]

I have a photograph that I did using color film that I want to see how it looks in B&W.
It's already scanned all that.
So I am wondering what's the best to get the best results.
Do I work it in grayscale and adjust accordingly.
Or do I destaurate it first and then work in grayscale?
Or is there a better way?
Thanks!
Brian

[Xia_Ke]

Brian, can't really say which way is best but, here's 2 of the better tutorials I have found:

http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1126557
http://www.bythom.com/bandw.htm

Personally, I like using the grayscale options in Lightroom. Hope the above links help set you off in the right direction. I look forward to your results

Aaron

[Greg McCary]

I always click the red, green and blue channel in channel mixer and pick the strongest of the three. Usally the red channel for some reason. Then choose that channel and click monochrome. After that you can adjust the the three channels a bit to make it better and then a curves tweak and tune and you are close. Then if you want to add sephia open a hue/saturation layer click colorize, and adjust the level of sephia there. I got this technique out of a landscape book that I bought.
Gary Heller also had a way posted on his web site at one time. It went into great detail.
I hope this helps some. But there are many ways.

[Medley]

If you have Photoshop, go to Layer> New adjustment layer> Hue/Saturation. Choose 'master' from the drop-down menu, and move the 'saturation' slider to zero.

Now you can choose the individual colors (reds, yellows, greens, blues, cyans, and magentas) from the drop-down menu, and adjust the 'lightness' slider to change the tone and contrast of each individual color. You get a huge amount of control over the final image. The following to images were both created from the same initial file using this method, to give you an idea of what can be achieved:





I'm not saying that either of these makes for a great b/w image, I'm just trying to illustrate what can be done. Hope this helps you.

- Joe U.

[Franglais]

Nikon Capture (and probably NX) does it very neatly. There is a Photo Effects box where you have you want "Black and White" or "Sepia" then you use the Channel Mixer sliders to get the best effect (and sometimes finish off with the automatic contrast adjustment). It works on NEF files of course but also with JPG.

Charles