Digital BW, The Print

Hello Mark,

>...Clayton's version, instead of an extra H/S layer, he uses a 
>Channel Mixer adjustment layer. When used with a H/S adjustment
>layer below it, you can control the tones for each color with all 
>three sliders in the H/S...Hue, Saturation and Lightness. Goooo 
>Clayton. I think you should march right into Russels office at 
>Adobe and lay down the facts! LOL!

Glad you like it, but I can't take credit for it.  The idea for using
these two layers is just one of many things I found somewhere on the
web a few years ago.  My only contribution is the particular workflow
I described, which has evolved over time. There are so many variables
you could play with it forever, but this sequence allows drilling down
to a final setting pretty quickly.

Over a 2+ year period I tried at least 8 or 10 different methods, from
simple to very complex, including actions, plugins and some commercial
product demos.  The main thing I learned from all that is that no one
approach is best for every image.  

I started out looking for the holy grail: something that would make my
digicam images look like my scanned Tri-X negs.  Even after I accepted
that it was a fool's errand I still held on to the idea that a single
approach or recipe would work for everything, once I found the one I
liked the best.  Over time as I gained experience and began to get an
intuitive feel for it I finally came to understand how much each image
requires individual treatment.  

After being enamored for a while of some of the canned approaches,
with predefined settings to emulate certain films or filters and such,
I came back around to the Photoshop layer type processes that let you
experiment and tweak to find what works best for each image.  To me
the canned approachs are like a channelized CB or FRS radio compared
to Amateur (Ham) Radios that use a VFO and give you continuous tuning
across the spectrum.  I finally settled on this particular approach as
being the best balance between simple and complex and giving all the
control I need - the "best bang for the buck", so to speak.  This
workflow allows me to feel my way into an image, each one being a
completely new exploration.  Sometimes the slightest tweak on a slider
makes a big difference.

As you can see, there are lots of different ways to do it.  Everyone
has to find their own path up the mountain.  It took me over two years
years to arrive at this approach.  


Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm
I-Trak