Digital BW, The Print

I regularly shoot color negative in my 4x5 field camera for b&w
landscapes. The negatives scan well, and as Paul points out, I can use
the Channel Mixer for custom filtering post-shoot. 

On top of that, I can use Select Color Range on the color image to build
alpha-channel masks, then use those later as layer masks with adjustment
layers to make tonal adjustments to the b&w image. You can even employ
the channel mixer as an adjustment layers with a layer mask, and thereby
apply different filters to different parts of an image.

Richard Wolfson
Harvard MA USA

> From: Paul D. DeRocco [mailto:pderocco@...] 
> 
> > From: spersky123
> >
> > It seems that Black and white film is tough to scan.  Does 
> anyone here 
> > use color film or color slide film scans with conversion to 
> black and 
> > white in photoshop for strictly black and white digital printing?
> > is there a loss of quality in the final print when compared to
> > traditional black and white film.
> 
> I've only done a couple shots like that with film and a film 
> scanner, since I switched to all-digital a few years ago. I 
> can't honestly comment on whether the results are necessarily 
> better or worse, except for one thing: with a color source 
> image, you can defer certain filtering effects until the 
> editing. If you use Photoshop's Channel Mixer, you can even 
> mix in negative quantities, e.g., 150% red plus -50% blue to 
> get really dark skies.
> 
> --
> 
> Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
> Paul                mailto:pderocco@...