Posts tagged with Black and white

Black and white – my speciality

Re-editable Silver Efex files

Although my starting point is LR, I always launch Silver Efex this way, via Photoshop as Smart Object. The flexibility is a big advantage.

“Readable and inspiring”

My Advanced Digital Black and White Photography is now available. “Readable and inspiring”, says Amateur Photographer magazine.

What’s your workflow to Nik software?

What’s your workflow to Nik software? If you own Lightroom and Photoshop, Photoshop “smart objects” are the best way to use Nik apps. The workflow is easy. Do all your corrections in LR then select the image, right click and choose Edit In > Open as Smart Object in Photoshop. Then in Photoshop select the …read more

Why not convert to B&W using the HSL panel?

Back in the days of Lightroom 1.1, the B&W panel had a big defect – it disabled the Luminance noise slider – so Martin Evening and I (among others) recommended using the HSL panel. This meant setting all the colours’ Saturation values to -100% and then dragging the Luminance sliders, white balance, and other colour …read more

What’s the best way to convert to B&W?

What is the best way to make pictures black and white? Go to the B&W panel in Develop’s right hand side and activate the targeted adjustment tool. That’s the little button at the top left of the B&W panel. It makes the cursor look like a pair of arrows which you can drag on the …read more

Silver Efex Pro 2

I’ve never been one who photographs in colour and occasionally dabbles with black and white. It’s very much the other way round, and I often look at pictures I’ve left in colour and think they’re rather monochrome anyway. But I’ve never seen doing a lot of b&w work as a reason why I would want …read more

B&W from different angles

There’s an interesting comparison of doing black and white in Capture One 6, Silver Efex 1, and Lightroom 3 by Mike at The Intuitive Lens. It’s a two parter with Capture One vs Silver Efex and then both vs Lightroom. I’m not sure it proves much, if anything, other than one if one tries to …read more

Mileage varies

Ben Long reviews Silver Efex Pro and correctly points out one of its best features The Black and White adjustment in Photoshop is very good because it allows you to make changes to specific color values in your image. The problem is that if you tell it to darken the blue tones in an image, …read more