Digital BW, The Print

There are two critical aspects of converting color to black and white -
mapping specific colors to grayscale values and creating a B&W image with
contrast that makes the image really come alive. Many techniques, such as
channel mixer,  focus on determining how the hues will map to grayscale
values. Even after I have used channel mixer, I often am still left with a
very unexciting grayscale image. It is the second aspect, the general shape
of the contrast curve, that is most critical to me, and this aspect is not
well addressed by many of the tools.

Color images shot on film, especially color negative film, seem to not
require too much manipulation to get a good contrast range, but images shot
with a digital camera are harder for me to make look good. Using an S-shaped
curve to increase contrast helps, but I still struggle. It seems like a
curve that models film's density-to-exposure curve should be able to do it,
but I haven't seen that available as a plug-in.

Steve

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "brad1gold" <brad@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 7:24 AM
Subject: [Digital BW] Conversions to Grayscale




I am printing on a 2200 with MIS inks. Regarding conversions to
grayscale from RGB files, what are the virtues of using B&W
conversion plug-ins such as offered by Fred Miranda, PhotoRetouche
or The Imaging Company's "Convert to Black and White" opposed to the
various techniques for making the conversion within CS?







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