WIP - Color into Black & White

OK, I am working on converting color into a rich B&W photo. I am using Gimp 2 but most tutorial videos are PS, so I cannot do it exactly how they do it in some cases.

Apparently, I will need to break down and get PS.

Any hints, tips, or links to a good video are GREATLY appreciated!!!!

Each photo below are different ways I've seen how to do it.

original

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r...aphy/gator.jpg

Simple Gar. Blur of dup layer and soft light

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r...y/gatorbw1.jpg

The following link is of a shot by edG. It is a film shot of his Nikon camera and a dog. This is what I am looking for, the blacks are black and the whites are white. Can this truly be reached with digital and software editing?

These are beautiful!!!!

EdG's B&W film of Nikon camera and Dog

You need to be able to "see" the tonalities on your monitor, and everyone else needs to see them too. But if YOUR monitor is out of whack, when you post, it will look out of whack to us.
The feedback we give will be only semi-useful to you because we are not looking at the same "apple".
Useful feedback and a faster learning curve can only happen if the monitor is calibrated....you can't learn properly if you can't see the tones.
This is why you couldn't see that the feet in your baby shot were mid-grey, not white. That's a HUGE discrepancy.

The tones from Ed's link are reachable by anyone at a beginner's level. You need a proper exposure and a calibrated monitor to see what you are doing. Many people on this board use the Spyder which is not that expensive.

Hope that helps - Marko

Well, the shot of the dog Ed took is with black and white film. So the comparison isn't really fair. Seeing in B&W and understanding how the dynamics of a monochrome photo differ from a color photo are two of the biggest struggles for digital only photographers. At the risk of tooting my own horn check out a couple articles I wrote earlier this year - Black and White Photography 101 « Wicked Dark Photography and Black and White Photography 201 « Wicked Dark Photography - they might be helpful.

I disagree WD.
Digital files are easily converted to black and white. As with anything, garbage in - garbage out. If the colour shot was crap, the BW will likely be crap as well.
theantiquetiger asked if these tones can truly be reached using digital.
If the exposure is good, the answer is certainly yes.
Your links are helpful tho - no prob on posting them.

you are free to disagree, but film v. digital isn't a fair fight.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Marko

You need to be able to "see" the tonalities on your monitor, and everyone else needs to see them too. But if YOUR monitor is out of whack, when you post, it will look out of whack to us.
The feedback we give will be only semi-useful to you because we are not looking at the same "apple".


Hope that helps - Marko

---

I believe I figured out what was wrong with my monitor, it was not out of calibration, I had it tilted at the wrong angle (I am on a laptop). When I went to those calibration links you sent me, at first I thought it was out of calibration at both ends of the scales, but by just tilting the screen slightly, all the blacks and all the whites were distinguishable.

It is my understanding that laptop screens are not the best for doing calibrations on. You may want to consider a separate monitor.