My first PSE4 b&w conversion - critics, please!

I'm continuing to take baby steps into Photoshop Elements 4 using Scott Kelby's book. This is the first time I've tried adjusting the individual color channels as opposed to just desaturating or changing to grayscale mode.

The original is a shot from my wife's garden that I thought would look good in black and white. I've never done this before, and I'm a PS neophyte, so critique away! That's how one learns.

I used Scott's method described in his book of creating a 'Levels' adjustment layer, then a 'Gradient Map' adjustment layer. In the levels layer I played with the channels a bit. I don't have much of an eye for this yet, so mostly, I pulled the end markers in to the "toe of the mountain" on the histogram, and I played with the middle marker if I thought I could see an improvement.

I then did Unsharp Mask, if I recall correctly, of about 175%, 3 pixel radius and threshold of 2. I have very little idea of what I'm doing with this, but mimicking others.

Finally, instead of grayscaling it, I left it RGB and played with some filters, ending up liking about 15% of the magenta filter.

I have a soft spot for the simplicity of a b&w image, probably because that's all I processed as a kid in my home darkroom, and what I did in the one college photography course I took. I'd really like to get good at b&w conversions, so fire away!

Thanks all!

John

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I like it. Nice contrast, lots of different grey tones, perhaps crop 1:1 ratio. The B&W is way better than the color IMHO.

Thanks, Tim. I like the B&W better, too, that's why I grabbed this one to practice on. Any tips on the technique? Or am I on the right track. . .bring the sliders in from the outside to the toes and play with the middle? I fiddled with it for a long time because it was my first and I figured I wasn't "doing it right".

You know, Photoshop Elements was making me crazy two weeks ago, now I love it. It's like I'm a kid learning to work in the darkroom all over again. I've gone from feeling frustrated over being helpless, to feeling like the joy in learning is in the journey of discovery. Now that I can fix a photo that is total crap (bad WB for example), I'm having fun with the creative stuff.

Here are a couple of different crops I played around with. I left the first one alone so I could see what was happening in the conversion.

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Nice job on that, John. You might want to stop by DMC.

Thanks for the tip! I will!

John

Great work. I too am a PSE 4 user (up from 2 to 3 and now 4). Kelby is great at giving direct instructions. I have not tried the duotone as of yet. Now I will. I wish we would hear from more PSE 4 users and share results. I have been trying to do Out of Frame techniques with the program. I am not yet satisfied. The CS tutorials don't translate to 4 very well.

Again, I really like your work and results. Keep it up.

Barry

Barry, you're right about the CS discussions not translating well to Elements. I've gotten good help at the photoshopelementsusers​.com forum, and Kelby's book is a big help. I'm going to try to go to one of his workshops this year. There's enough power in Elements to make that worthwhile, I think.

Don't know what I'm doing, but it's fun stuff!!

John

I think it looks terrific! All sorts of grays in there which really make things interesting. Nice job of sharpening too. The B/W looks MUCH sharper than the original and helped to bring out detail in the flower.

> Don't know what I'm doing, but it's fun stuff!!

Hahahaha. I like that. Sure looks like you are on the right track.

Nice image... I use a PS plugin from Imagingfactory called convert to BW version 3. I like the way it works and took the liberty of running your original image through it and cropping slightly differently than you have done. Gives it a different feel. It gives up some of the sharpness you had since a used your uploaded file.

Thanks for sharing it.

Dennis

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Thanks, Dennis. So you just let that plugin run on the original and "do its thing" without intervention? Not bad!

I do like your offcenter crop better. I was really focusing on the conversion, but I shouldn't have cropped it dead center like I did.

I'll keep playing with the Scott Kelby technique for a while, I don't think I'm going to need a plugin, frankly. And if I got it, on really important images, I'd be as likely as not to want to tweak it some more, so unless it's freeware, I probably won't bite. Thanks for the input, though. It would likely be useful if someone wanted to batch a ton of pictures to b&w, but I don't see me doing that.

John

I use Glenn Mitchel's TLR B&W Conversion actions, plus a few of my own. Usually I run a bunch of them, to see what settings look the best, then start over and convert manually.

Not exactly, without intervention. You can select color "filter" and adjust contrast, color response etc..(the website is http://www.theimagingf​actory.com/ if you want to read about it). I also like the channel mixer approach you use.

Oh man, I'm sorry, they don't work with PSE, I don't think. But you can create some of your own, right?

Here is my 5 minute of PS on your picture, but personally I think yours look better.
http://i23.photobucket​.com …erOriginalPS_fi​ltered.jpg

lostdoggy, that's a pretty cool image, actually, I like it! It's not really a monochrome, there's still a little green left in the leaves and some color buried in the leafy part and the flower, but I like it.

I used to think like a photographer, because that's what I did. You could do all sorts of funky artsy stuff in the darkroom back in the day, but generally, I didn't. Now I'm looking at what can be done in Photoshop and really beginning to appreciate how it expands what you can do with photographs as art. I suspect I'll still go for more "traditional" looks for a while, but I really like your image.

When I get used to getting my photographs looking like I want in PSE, I'll play around with the artsy stuff more. One I saw in a magazine turned a woman's facial portrait into what looked like oil on canvas! Anyway, I do like your PS.

What amazes me is I'm not getting a lot of criticism. Frankly, I have screwed this up so badly until I got Kelby's book, I figured I'd come in here and take my lumps, but I guess this turned out OK. I do like the tonality I got in that full frame. Thank heaven for Kelby's book. I don't always know why he's doing something, but he just sort of takes your hand, puts it on the mouse and says, "do this" and you get results. I was going out of my mind trying to "understand" the program.

JFrancho Thanks a million for the link! I read the Jeff Alu interview and branched out to other B&W sites. Awesome!

John