C&C Please BW Conversion

Here's my take. First, there are definitely highlights blown in this image. Just look above the groom's shoulder. Also, the lighting on their faces could be softer. I fixed the shiny spots. Then it's a desaturation, and levels adjustment, with some tone mods.

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Agree 12 stones that lighting on face could have been softer, but with lower flash compensation some of the early shots were too dark (harsh tropical afternoon sun), that's why they I put them under the trees. I have a lumiquest small softbox for flash but I normally only use that for inside shots. Maybe that would have worked?

Is there any easy technique to remove hot spots from the face, I have tried cloning but ends up patchy?

BTW I really like this conversion, thanks!

Here's a 2 minute fix. I'd do this on the color then convert to b&w. If you have ACR, then you can recover a lot of the detail in her face by sliding the recovery bar... I did it a little less than half way. The easiest, easiest fix... though technically may produce so so results... is what I did next. In Photoshop, open a new layer. Color sampled areas around the hotspots. Colored in the spots. I color sampled a few areas and colored those in (her lips, her right eye, his face). Then I reduced the layer fill. Lastly, I took the eraser and set it on a decent size brush and 10% strength and dabbed the areas if they looked unnatural.

Again, just a 2 minute fix. I think there are better ways, but this is the easiest method I've found.

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Thanks, Reign, great 2 minute fix with desired result - cool. I'm all for the easiest option, I shall definitely give it a go.

I use recovery tool in LR which I did initially but I think I have played around too much in CS3 and didn't recheck histogram. My reasoning I suppose is I prefer the white vs grey look of BG shirt in original, IMHO, even if a little detail is lost. Probably not the correct thing to do, though.

I see your point... I overdid it with the shirt. Overall, my image is kinda dark... makes it look more like an evening shot with artificial lighting than afternoon.

Oh, and if I was unclear before... color on the blank layer... not the original photo... and change the fill or opacity of that blank layer, too

Reign wrote in post #6508695
Overall, my image is kinda dark... makes it look more like an evening shot with artificial lighting than afternoon.

Nothing wrong with getting more mileage out of a single image!

Oh, and if I was unclear before... color on the blank layer... not the original photo... and change the fill or opacity of that blank layer, too

Thanks, I would of got into strife. Probably will anyway, LOL

Amazing what sort of tutorial videos are out there. I found this one that showed me that technique. Masking, however, is generally better... but this was fast and easy to learn.

http://tutorialbucket.​googlepages.com/psflas​hhotspots.html

It has more steps, but I skip them sometimes.

Terrific - great tutorials for all of us who love visual learning. Well worth checking out and I have bookmarked this one. Thanks again