Black and white--frustrated with Elements 6

[Camden]

I recently switched from film to digital. Color photography is now a joy. Not so black and white. I find my pictures are not coming out the way I want, despite having them machine-printed in a very good lab (A&I). It's difficult to describe what is wrong, exactly, beyond the obvious--compared to Ilford FP4, my Nikon D40x has a lousy dynamic range. The pictures somehow lack definition and texture.

I'm beginning to wonder whether Elements is part of the problem. I have followed the common advice to shoot in color (to my shame, I shoot "fine" jpegs) and then convert to black and white. But those fiddly little sliders are a pain to use, and the "after" window is tiny. I find I cannot really replicate the effect of a filter by sliding them around.

Should I perhaps go for a plug-in and, if so, which one? I'm not a computer whiz so it would need to be pretty simple. And hopefully cheap.

Many thanks in advance.

[jag32266]

Hi,

PSE6 is new to me tho I've been an avid PS using for many years. I do have and use PS for other things but got PSE to intergrate into my Premiere Elements editing.
In PS there are additional levels for sure and I was quite happy using LAB for my black & whites. A great book on this alone is out there by Dan Margulis.

So I really can't help with what plugins you should go for BUT you could find all types of tutorials etc that just might help with your PSE block. And of course you might try your local library for some of the books listed on your internet searches.

Point is: don't get too frustrated, there is a bit of a learning curve to all this stuff.

[Camden]

Many thanks for the encouragement. I am somewhat averse to books on black and white digital photography because they all appear to assume (irritatingly without saying so) that the reader is using the full-featured Photoshop. An experienced user of the program would perhaps be able to translate some of the concepts to Elements. The trouble is that I am not an experienced user.

[Lesa]

It's my understand that Elements v6 has a new black & white conversion tool with many presets, sliders for custom tweaking of each color channel, and has a handy preview window.

[TonyW]

I too find the PSE6 Black and White conversion rather slow but all it is is a front-end to the channel mixer. You can get the channel mixer itself by installing Grants Tools (you can get them from this thread http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34727 ). I find using the channel mixer itself rather than the Black and White conversion much slicker. You'll find lots of tutorials on how to use the channel mixer for Black and White conversion. The only thing you don't get are the presets but you can save your own from the channel mixer and load them when you want them.

The other (also free) convertor you might want to look at is Virtual Photographer. Lots of B&W effects and you can also make your own.

www.optikvervelabs.com (http://www.optikvervelabs.com)

Tony

[Wendy]

Hi ...

I agree with Tony ... I get by far the best results using the Channel Mixer :)

Wendy

[ljameso1]

Another good resource(not too expensive) is Richard Lynch's Hidden Power series. It comes with a lesson book that really helped me get good conversions as my previous favorite(Grant's channel mixer) won't work in PSE4(the version I currently have.

[Wendy]

Hi Linda ...

When you do decide to upgrade then Grant's Channel Mixer will work now :)

Wendy

[Bayla]

You'll find lots of tutorials on how to use the channel mixer for Black and White conversion.

Tony,

Can you recommend any specific tutorials for using Channel Mixer?

Bayla

[TonyW]

Bayla: Here's one:

http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/black-and-white-photoshop.html

BTW when you use Grant's Tools (or Graffi's Handy Actions) in PSE6 you'll get a slightly different (and I think better) Channel Mixer - I think it's the CS3 one. It has a Total (and warns if you go over 100% which however you can ignore if you like the result) and has a preset box and a litttle icon next to it that you click on to load and save presets. Curiously even though PSE6 doesn't officially have a channel mixer it installs a folder for saving presets :confused:. Only downside is that it isn't a true adjustment layer (so you can't reopen and tweak it) but, at least the Grants Tools version puts it on a new layer with a layer mask so you can paint some colour back in if you want.

1945

Tony

[Bayla]

Tony,

Thanks for that. Although I've had Grant's tools for almost as long as I've had PSE3 I've never really explored Channel Mixer as I wasn't really sure what I was doing.:o My PSE6 is arriving on sunday, so I'm looking forward to uninstalling the demo version and then playing some more. What's the 'Constant' slider for?

Bayla

[TonyW]

Tony,

Thanks for that. Although I've had Grant's tools for almost as long as I've had PSE3 I've never really explored Channel Mixer as I wasn't really sure what I was doing.:o My PSE6 is arriving on sunday, so I'm looking forward to uninstalling the demo version and then playing some more. What's the 'Constant' slider for?

Bayla

The Constant slider just darkens or brightens the whole image. Another tip (with PSE6) is, having got it close in the Channel Mixer use a Brightness/Contrast Adjustment Layer on top to tweak it. Brightness/Contrast was pretty useless in earlier versions (and CS2) but has been improved a lot in PSE6 and CS3. No longer does it chop off the histogram but maintains the full tonal range. Shadows/Highlights is better too.

Tony

[Daviskw]

Hi Camden

There are of course many procedures to convert a color image to grayscale but what often causes confusion is why a procedure is needed.

Try this experiment….

Make a new image and fill with white. Add two blank layers… on one layer fill a square with pure Red. On the second blank layer fill a duplicate square with pure Blue.

Move one square so they slightly overlap.

Flatten the image

In color there is a definite difference between the two squares…but now desaturate your image. I use ctrl+shift+U... Don't convert to grayscale just yet... just desaturate.

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1wTC2Wg7ysq9bwMJnxIpa11f2dyoJ0_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1wTC2Wg7ysq9bwMJnxIpa11f2dyoJ0)

As you can see the red and blue now become indistinguishable from each other. That is because of the three values of color…Hue, saturation, and brightness…. Only brightness counts, when desaturating, nothing else.

It so happens that blue and red have the same brightness so they look the same when desaturated.

Photoshop understands this and tries to use a generic formula to convert to grayscale.. Remember converting to grayscale and desaturating are two different things.

It applies a formula something like 3 parts red…6 parts green and 1 part blue then desaturates. This will give a difference in luminance between most but not all colors… the red and blues for instance will look a different gray. See the grayscale conversion in the example above.

OK… often however depending on the luminance or color contrast of your image this generic conversion will not provide the proper contrast of luminance and the pictures will often look dead …dull or lifeless.

All the different procedures… including the B&W conversion in Elements are trying to allow you to change the relationship of luminance for a particular color. The sliders are allowing you, for instance, to add more parts of red before the desaturation.

If you were to see these colors before the conversion red would not look red or blue blue… but when desaturated they would maintain their relative luminosity that mimics the difference in hue and saturation of the original color picture.

I hope the why above helps you understand what is happening when using the various procedures to convert color to black and white.

Butch