Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Our lives at times seem a study in contrast … everything seen in absolutes of black & white. Too often we are not aware that it is the shades of grey that add depth & meaning to the starkness of those extremes.”—Ansel Adams
I once wrote an article called “My Favorite Gear for Creating Monochrome Photographs” that appeared in Shutterbug when it was still a print magazine. At the time, I demonstrated my favorite tools for converting color images into black and white photographs and since those halcyon days I haven’t changed by opinions, at least not much.
One of my favorite software power tools is Exposure Software’s Exposure X4. The plug-in’s currently up to X7 but this is the only version that works on Photoshop CS6 and the OS that I’m running on my 5K iMac. You can see what I did with this combination for a portrait of Erin Valakari using Exposure 4’s Afga APX 25 preset here and I couldn’t resist adding a tiny bit of soft focus.
The other favorite and typically my first go-to monochrome conversion tool is Silver Efex Pro 2, the Google version. The current version, which is known as Nik Silver Efex, won’t run with my 5K Mac OS’s operating system and Photoshop CS6 that I use for my daily work.
Silver Efex Pro 2 includes a History Browser, Dynamic Brightness, Amplify Blacks, Amplify Whites, Soft Contrast, Fine Structure, Image Borders along with selective colorization. The plug-in includes algorithms for black-and-white photography, an all-in-one workflow, and the ability to fine-tune images with precise selective adjustments powered by U Point technology that lets you to make detail, contrast, and tonality enhancements without requiring complicated selections or layer masks. When added to finishing adjustments such as vignette, toning, burn edges and borders, the plug-in, that some might consider out of date*— does what I want to make it black-and-white images.
*To put the question of what’s the latest and best software for digital imaging into some kind of perspective, I’m reminded of a conversation I once had with a widely published and distinguished travel photographer who I traveled with in Acapulco Mexico several years ago. This was before Adobe went over to their current greed-driven subscription model. Over a really nice breakfast together, I casually asked him what version of Photoshop he was using and he said, “Three.” I replied, “CS3?” and his response was, “No, Photoshop 3.01 running under the mighty Windows 95.”
How I made the above portrait: Lighting was two Paul C Buff DigiBee DB800’s and one Alien Bee B800 light. Background was the hand painted Carbonite muslin from Silverlake Photo. The camera used was a Olympus Pen F with Oly’s 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 II kit lens.Exposure was 1/200 sec at f/11 and ISO 400. You can see the original but retouched and slightly enhanced version of Ms. Valakari’s parfait at about right. The original file was converted to a DNG file using Adobe DNG Converter and that did the trick at the time*, converting ORF’s into portable DNG files I could use with my older version of Photoshop. That file was converted to monochrome with Silver Efex Pro with the Glamour Glow filter from Color Efex Pro added for a soft focus effect along with a tiny bit of warm tone for a final touch.
*The latest version of DNG Converter won’t run on my 5K iMac and its OS. My workaround was to install the newer version of the software on my 23-inch iMac that has a later operating system then transferring to the 5K iMac. The entire process is awkward. But what’s a poor hippo to do?
My book Creative Digital Monochrome Effects is available from Amazon for $8.45 with used copies, as I write this, starting at around two bucks, for what is one of my personally favorite books. That’s cheaper than a Starbucks latte, so you should get one while you can.