Digital BW, The Print

scrber writes:

> Very informative post, thank you.
> But basically, no easy way right?

No easy way that I know of.  Basically, anything that requires human
intelligence, such as recognizing pimples on a face or selectively
correcting for color balance errors in mixed lighting, is going to
require a lot of hand work.  The only things that can be automated to
any extent are those that can be done on the basis of pixel colors
alone.  In digital retouching, there aren't that many things that can be
automated.  Even sky modifications, as simple as they might seem from a
human standpoint, are often impossible to automate to any extent.

> 1. Use a polariser

Yes.

> 2. Use hue/sat / whatever conversion methods appropriate to get dark 
> skies without posterisation

Yes, although 8-bit data may posterize if you have to make a sharp
change.  No way to avoid that.

> 3. Darker (is PAINT) manually to darken

Yes.  And posterization may still be a problem for 8-bit data.

> Right?  Pretty much what I've been doing, but its so da*n slow and
> I'm naff at it!

You get faster in time, but it is never quick and easy.

I spend a lot of time on night shots, for example, because varied light
sources always mess up the color balance, and because sharp contrasts
make some sort of adjustment to recover detail in highlights and shadows
necessary.  Both of these always involve lots and lots of time spent
brushing over the image by hand.  The results can be pretty impressive.

It's best to have a deep, high-resolution image to work with.  That
means a deep scan (10 bits, 12 bits, or however many you can get) at
high resolution, or a digicam image with the same characteristics.  It's
extremely difficult and often disappointing to try to adjust 8-bit data,
and low resolution also can turn an image to mud if you have to retouch
anything.

One of the things I like about shooting Portra 400BW is its range; the
film is low contrast, but for night shots that is an advantage.  See

http://www.mxsmanic.com/stairs.jpg

This image had a _lot_ more contrast originally, with nearly blocked
shadows and seemingly blown highlights.  But a deep scan revealed lots
of detail in the shadows and highlights, and a lot of burning and
dodging in the digital realm reduced the contrast and restored good
detail from corner to corner.  Shadows on the dark surface of the water
were preserved by the film, as were details in the bright spot on the
wall near the lamppost.

This image was a similar case

http://www.mxsmanic.com/artists.jpg

The original was a lot more contrasty.  But the film had actually
recorded a lot of shadow and highlight detail, even though it wasn't
initially obvious.  Extensive dodging and burning brought out this
detail, so that virtually no part of the image has that ugly featureless
black or white look of an image with blown highlights and shadows.

Color and slide film are much more difficult.  For example:

http://www.atkielski.com/Wallpapers/display.php?picfile=PlaceVendome&picwidth=800&picheight=600

This image was dramatically retouched.  The colors were all over the
place in the original, and the contrasts were frightening.  I must have
spent an hour or more trying to get this one to look okay.  The result
still isn't ideal, but it looks a thousand times better than the
original, believe me!  At least the final version kinda sorta resembles
what I actually saw in person.

One of the nice things about B&W is that you don't have to worry about
color balance.

  -- AA