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Photography Question 

Gena A. Tussey
 

b&w in digital...what works best?


The only b&w I do at work is with a Hassleblad or Bronica. I would like to do some work in B&W but when I try in digital, it just looks like yuck. I have my D70 normally set at -2 white value on auto...any suggestions for photographing older people in b&w this way?


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March 02, 2005

 

dennis w. mcclain
  well im a real amature but I always color coerct in photoshop before I desat my pics. I also do it in a new copy layer, that way if I screw up I just delete the layer and start over. dont know if that will help ya any tho


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March 02, 2005

 

Brooke Peterschmidt
  I also noticed that built the in black and white feature on digital cameras is pretty lousy. What I do is shoot all my pictures in color. When I want to convert it to B&W, and make a new levels layer and click OK without changing anything. Then I make a new hue/saturation layer. When the hue menu box comes up, take out all the saturation, then click OK. Then double click on the levels layer. Select each color (red, green, blue) in turn from the drop down bar and adjust the left and right hand bars until you like how the picture looks. Once you've adjust all three colors, select RGB from the drop down bar to make your final levels adjustment (lightening or darkening the overall picture). Then click OK. In the Layers menu, select "flatten image" to complete the conversion. This is a method I learned from Scott Kelby's book "Photoshop Elements for Digital Photographers." Converting to B&W like this produces much better results than using the auto convert.


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March 02, 2005

 
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