Red Beach, Bribie Island. Better in B&W?

Hi all,

This is Red Beach with the barge to Stradbroke Island waaaaaaaay off in the distance. I've tried converting this to B&W several times, because I'm sure it would look better, but I can't seem to get a decent image. Anyone care to have a go?

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I like the image in color, its almost duo chrom anyway ... colorize the sky?

I tried to get the surf to have all the contrast and just let the sky and beach go whichever way they wanted, but in the end it was not very satisfying. So, I guess I like the color version better. It's just too bad that the sky is not more interesting.

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Hi meatyo, llaamboy said it. has a chrome look. Beautiful beach.Can you make the sky more blue?
Jenny

Thanks for trying Bob. Yeah it's difficult to get a good sky when you're shooting into the sun and don't want to use a polarizer. I'll muck around with the sky and see what I can do.

Thanks BG. I'll try. Might just have to paste in a "canned sky"

Color is better but it looks like your lighting isn't the greatest. The light coming off the water is rather harsh. Converting to B&W makes the image too bright.

Meatyo,

on your original Raw is there any information in the driftwood(?) that can be used to give it a little definition? It looks like a black hole in the shot.

David

No. With the driftwood exposed, the sky is blown out. If I just select the driftwood and lighten it, it appears "strange". I guess I should have done multiple exposures, under and overexposed and merged them.

Here's my attempt - I selected the surf, sand, and sky separately, and applied levels layers to each of them. I also used the channel mixer (25,65,15,-5) to convert to monochrome.

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Thanks, that's the best conversion so far. I'm beginning to think this shot isn't worth converting because of the difficulties with the sky. Think I'll have to go back and reshoot.

unless - you didn't shoot RAW did you?

I always shoot RAW, but don't always keep the RAW file due to lack of space (a short term problem).

Hehe, cos otherwise, you could try converting the shot twice - once exposed for the sky, and once as you have already, to pull out more detail from the sky

Or - see if you have some interesting sky in another shot. . .

Hey that's a good idea...now I know why I like this forum...I learn new stuff!

Just one problem...I don't think Photoshop Elements 4.0 has the capability to merge images. (No worry, 'cos I've ordered a copy of Photoshop CS2)