A little bit of black and white

[Josh Bear]

Dear All,

I thought I would post a little bit of B&W. Taken my time with these. Some work with dodging and burning along with selective sharpening to enhance the textures already there.

Hope you enjoy.

Best Regards

Josh

[Ian]

Re: A little bit of black and white

I like the second last one of St.Paul's as it has more contrast. The others are a bit too grey for me. Black and white is not easy when the image is dominated by mid-tones.

Ian

[Stephen]

Re: A little bit of black and white

I'm detecting some noise & vertical banding in the clouds of the second shot, which suggests maybe some over processing going on.

I find that clouds can be enhanced by using the Clarity slider in CS or LR. Perhaps if you experimented on the original with the graduated filter then clarity, you may get a better result.

I love the shot of St Pauls, you have controlled the blues nicely to make them really dark and contrasty

[Josh Bear]

Re: A little bit of black and white

Hi

thanks for the comments both.

Stephen. Went back to the raw file and processed again using the nd filter in LR and then the clarity slider. Conversion to B&W was in elements using the scenic landscapes preset. here is the result
Best Regards

Josh

[Stephen]

Re: A little bit of black and white

Hi

thanks for the comments both.

Stephen. Went back to the raw file and processed again using the nd filter in LR and then the clarity slider. Conversion to B&W was in elements using the scenic landscapes preset. here is the result
Best Regards

Josh

The noise and banding looks to be better, though not sure if the clarity slider worked as well as I'd hoped. Not sure why you did the B/W conversion in Elements though. I tend to feel LR does a great job.

[Josh Bear]

Re: A little bit of black and white

No idea why I don't use LR for the conversion. It could be habit. I never trusted the sharpening feature of the early editions of LR so always took the picture into photoshop for sharpening anyway.

Thank you for the comments they are appreciated.

best regards

Josh