I'm not quite up to following all that you did here, but my #1 takeaway is to leave the image in color in the beginning rather than convert to b&w immediately. Big difference. Thank you.
Some things to think about in this video. Never really been happy with the way Lightroom handles contrast and detail in black & white. My goto for black & white is Nik's Silver Efex Pro (often with some pre-production tweaks in Color Efex Pro 4 before hitting Silver Efex.) I love the different film emulations you can run in Silver Efex Pro. It is the very best black & white editor I've seen.
Great video. The tips and techniques make a lot of sense. If you ever have time to do one using a portrait subject as the target I think it would help a lot of us to approach the nuisances of skin tones and shadow management.
Enjoyed the video and gained some great tips. Editing a color photo to b&w is always challenging for me. I like to see details in the dark areas, but I think this doesn't let me edit the lighter areas with enough contrast. You provided some good tips on how to bring out the contrast in the light areas. I like the clouds and water in your image, but the rocks seem a little dark for me, but that again is personal taste.
To each his own but to my taste, the cliffs left to much darkness in the scene. I personally would have preferred more detail on the cliffs by actually lifting the shadows a bit or judiciously dodging rather than burning. Sometimes blackness is itself a distraction. I think a better result could have been achieved by cropping to a 4-5 crop with the bottom part cropped away. That would have brought even more focus to the wave and not left such overpowering blackness in the scene. It was a good tutorial to cover the basics even if it didn't match up with my taste in BW.
Nice work on local adjustments. Good photographers all want to get to this point. You can even take this a bit further with an adjustment brush for even more detail and separation. But ... this is another skill set that rarely gets discussed, becoming a painter of light. There are no rules here, no steps, no presets you can apply. This is where you need to think more like an artist. It begins with looking at the image as what it is, analyzing its weakness and strengths and beginning the process to taking the image to where you want to be. That means having a vision of the end game, final product and working with finer brushes to bring it all out. This is a huge transition for many photographers where we toss out the global siders for brushes and assigning appropriate attributes to each brush used. This requires an in-depth knowledge of all your tools and what they can do. You can not approach this with trial and error or you will spend hours and days in wasted processing. This is the ultimate mastery, the ultimate reward.
Loved it! Very informative, and beautifully presented with clear explanations. I'll have to rewatch the clip and make notes though, because I work in Darktable/Linux and the techniques outlined here don't translate directly. Should be a nice challenge for me!
Hi sir this is Kiran from INDIA. I have a doubt in lightroom, after I clicked a monochrome picture style in canon 5D mark IV. It will show coloured image in lightroom. how to import as monochrome in lightroom. Please let me know. I am your fan and follower and TH-cam subscriber. Please
Is it possible to add color filters - like in the old days you wold screw on a red filter, shoot BW film, and it would be mor contrasty. There are ways to turn a WB into a Red/white with filters, and you can adjust just the red colors etc. I think there war a version where you could add WB red etc, but you couldn't increase the effect of it So the result I'm looking for is a BW image, with the contraste etc, as if I had used a red or what ever color, filter when I took it. BUT still a WB image - makes sense? Is it possible or do you have to make the effect your self with the contrast etc adjustments?
Well done as usual. While i typically use dxo silver effects knowing different ways to approach in different programs surely helps. I have one question why did you feel that leaving the detail out of the rocks added to the image. I saw more detail in some of the previous versions which I personally preferred but wanted to understand your style.
Hi Pye, thanks for the in-depth tutorial, no doubt watching this will improve my future workflow for b&w images. I'd really appreciate it if you could just expand on why you reduce the exposure after making the image black and white. My thought is that it's because it allows for some extra leeway in making adjustments to the whites, blacks, and mid-tones. Is that correct?
I assume this is shot raw so hiding the detail so much in the final image defeats the purpose of capturing it in the first place. This is the equivalent of too much salt in the soup. Less is more.
In terms of labeling, would be WAY more helpful if you name the step links in the description rather than just calling them "Step." Like, what's the step, so I know what to click on.
Great for a computer screen. Not great if you are printing. Prints will almost always print darker then your computer screen. If this image was printed, all the dark areas would just print as a solid black ink blob. I respect the technique, but i find almost all TH-camrs when doing edits like this never talk about how the image would print.
Any help with B&W is always appreciated. Thanks.
Always learn some new way of doing things from your videos. Thank you.
I'm not quite up to following all that you did here, but my #1 takeaway is to leave the image in color in the beginning rather than convert to b&w immediately. Big difference. Thank you.
Great advice Pye. Thanks.
Loved this. I just reworked several of my mono pics and they look even better. Thanks for this.
Some things to think about in this video. Never really been happy with the way Lightroom handles contrast and detail in black & white. My goto for black & white is Nik's Silver Efex Pro (often with some pre-production tweaks in Color Efex Pro 4 before hitting Silver Efex.) I love the different film emulations you can run in Silver Efex Pro. It is the very best black & white editor I've seen.
Great video. The tips and techniques make a lot of sense. If you ever have time to do one using a portrait subject as the target I think it would help a lot of us to approach the nuisances of skin tones and shadow management.
Thank you sir! Big time adjustments in SMALL increments. Well done.. Mr. Hop...
Exactly what I needed! Thank you! 🙏🏼
Very cool technique! Thank you, Pye!
Enjoyed the video and gained some great tips. Editing a color photo to b&w is always challenging for me. I like to see details in the dark areas, but I think this doesn't let me edit the lighter areas with enough contrast. You provided some good tips on how to bring out the contrast in the light areas. I like the clouds and water in your image, but the rocks seem a little dark for me, but that again is personal taste.
Awesome video as always and great tips for getting nice B&W.
Thanks for joining us this week! How do you like to edit your black and white images?
Thank you for a great edit. I will use your techniques on some of my new work, thank you.
An awesome video gave me a ton of ideas for my photography
Holy hell man. this is next level!! thanks!
Thanks so much! Was Looking for something like this.
Great video I have been looking how to improve there and that works
grazie e complimenti per la spiegazione
Very cool!
Awesome Tutorial.
Wow great tips and great work, thanks for the infos love the content !
To each his own but to my taste, the cliffs left to much darkness in the scene. I personally would have preferred more detail on the cliffs by actually lifting the shadows a bit or judiciously dodging rather than burning. Sometimes blackness is itself a distraction. I think a better result could have been achieved by cropping to a 4-5 crop with the bottom part cropped away. That would have brought even more focus to the wave and not left such overpowering blackness in the scene. It was a good tutorial to cover the basics even if it didn't match up with my taste in BW.
Same, also i immediately thought this particular would have made a great two tone color photo with the blue and red/orange tones
Excellent tutorial. Thanks. Please share link to buy preaents and brushes for Lr classic
Nice work on local adjustments. Good photographers all want to get to this point. You can even take this a bit further with an adjustment brush for even more detail and separation. But ... this is another skill set that rarely gets discussed, becoming a painter of light. There are no rules here, no steps, no presets you can apply. This is where you need to think more like an artist. It begins with looking at the image as what it is, analyzing its weakness and strengths and beginning the process to taking the image to where you want to be. That means having a vision of the end game, final product and working with finer brushes to bring it all out. This is a huge transition for many photographers where we toss out the global siders for brushes and assigning appropriate attributes to each brush used. This requires an in-depth knowledge of all your tools and what they can do. You can not approach this with trial and error or you will spend hours and days in wasted processing. This is the ultimate mastery, the ultimate reward.
Great video, thank you!
Great!! Love it! Thanks a lot!!
Loved it! Very informative, and beautifully presented with clear explanations. I'll have to rewatch the clip and make notes though, because I work in Darktable/Linux and the techniques outlined here don't translate directly. Should be a nice challenge for me!
Hi sir this is Kiran from INDIA. I have a doubt in lightroom, after I clicked a monochrome picture style in canon 5D mark IV. It will show coloured image in lightroom. how to import as monochrome in lightroom. Please let me know. I am your fan and follower and TH-cam subscriber. Please
You're my f*cking hero, Pye ❤️
awesome, thank you
Awesome!
I will sure try that in Lightroom Mobile. It will be a challenge but let's see how it goes on there.
Same, but for portraits please ;)
Is it possible to add color filters - like in the old days you wold screw on a red filter, shoot BW film, and it would be mor contrasty.
There are ways to turn a WB into a Red/white with filters, and you can adjust just the red colors etc.
I think there war a version where you could add WB red etc, but you couldn't increase the effect of it
So the result I'm looking for is a BW image, with the contraste etc, as if I had used a red or what ever color, filter when I took it. BUT still a WB image
- makes sense?
Is it possible or do you have to make the effect your self with the contrast etc adjustments?
This is an excellent tutorial! Thanks for making it!!
Well done as usual. While i typically use dxo silver effects knowing different ways to approach in different programs surely helps. I have one question why did you feel that leaving the detail out of the rocks added to the image. I saw more detail in some of the previous versions which I personally preferred but wanted to understand your style.
I thought the same thing about the rocks, I would prefer more detail. But the basic methodology was very instructive.
do a portrait session with sony 600mm f4
I don't like the way you said "lets pull the blacks down" hahaha kidding kidding, great video.
Hi Pye, thanks for the in-depth tutorial, no doubt watching this will improve my future workflow for b&w images. I'd really appreciate it if you could just expand on why you reduce the exposure after making the image black and white. My thought is that it's because it allows for some extra leeway in making adjustments to the whites, blacks, and mid-tones. Is that correct?
i am more a fan of NIK collection, seems way less work and better results for looks for me =)
Haiiii
I know all of this.
I assume this is shot raw so hiding the detail so much in the final image defeats the purpose of capturing it in the first place. This is the equivalent of too much salt in the soup. Less is more.
There's no point to separating your colours like this when you just darken everything into oblivion anyway
In terms of labeling, would be WAY more helpful if you name the step links in the description rather than just calling them "Step." Like, what's the step, so I know what to click on.
Great for a computer screen. Not great if you are printing. Prints will almost always print darker then your computer screen. If this image was printed, all the dark areas would just print as a solid black ink blob. I respect the technique, but i find almost all TH-camrs when doing edits like this never talk about how the image would print.