conversion to b/w plug-ins

[linda m. quigley]

i am looking for recommendations on the best plug-in for conversion to black and white. i print a lot of black and white images and the conversion to grayscale mode, even with levels and/or contrast tweaking just doesn't do it for me. i want the images to look as close to film b/w as possible.

have heard of several--nik color fx, the imaging factory and alien skin, to mention a few. anybody else a b/w "purist" who has had luck with any of these or others??

thanks!

[Codebreaker]

Try...

http://www.optikvervelabs.com/

Colin

[Wendy]

Hi Linda ...

... and welcome to the forum :)

Which version of Elements are you using? ...

A while back Grant wrote a tutorial on various conversion methods The method I prefer is the Channel Mixer ... Grant's tool set includes that but only for PSE3. Sadly Adobe blocked access to it in PSE4.

Here is the tutorial link:

http://www.cavesofice.org/~grant/B&W/Index.html

Wendy

[ME100FINN]

Linda, I have tried a few samples using the plug in mentioned above and it is nice. My gallery has one that used the sepia tone with the plug in. I think the b/w drummer just used "Remove Color" on a layer. The slider options on the plug in allow one click control and you can even select options such as "film #1" or "film #2" or even "slide" and then adjust futher. I think you might like it! I also looked through Grants tutorials and have tried some of those with good results too. I think the most difficult thing with b/w is consistency. From one pic to another I like variations--one I might like the dark jump off the page black, another more subtle. Well, these are just my two cents!