Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Mike Sommers 

> The hardest part for me is converting my images from color to B&W. 
I go 
> into the channel mixer and usually come out with 40% green and 60% 
red, 
> or vice versa... but there are so many combinations that 
technically 
> "work." I'm constantly secong-guessing myself.
> 
> Most importantly, I'd like to set up a Photoshop action that will 
> quickly convert hundreds of images from color to B&W... Does 
anybody 
> have a recommendation for a basic setting in the channel mixer? or 
some 
> other way of confidently batch-processing from color to B&W for 
> "everyday" shots? I'll be printing with the Epson 1280 onto Epson 
> Heavyweight Matte (and then Enhanced Matte, once all my Heavyweight 
runs 
> out) with UltraTone Inks from MIS and Paul Roark's workflow.
> 

Mike, BW conversion is what I do most of the times here. I dont know 
what type of shots you do most, but for myself I found out that one 
setting would not work for all photos - specially if I want a 
good "black and white" look. As we dont have colors as an expression 
in our  photos, everything lies in the different tones of grey and 
the contrasts. If your photos come out contrasty from the beginning, 
it might be easier with a general channel mixer setting - or even the 
simple "PS convert to bit grey"command. For portraits its useful to 
slightly enhance the red channel to give a softer look to the faces, 
if there is too low contrast however the green channel is better to 
enhance. 

You can build 2 or 3 standard actions and once you get a feeling 
which one is appropriate for which photo, batch apply different 
actions to a group of photos.

Most difficult in b&w are flat indoor portraits made without flash - 
when you enhance the contrasts they easily start to look very 
unhealthy :-)
If you need the channel settings for green and red enhancements, let 
me know - I will check the numbers out and tell you.

regards Bernie