Is this an OK B&W conversion

Taken on my way home today.

First the colour version




Then my B&W conversion - is it OK?





All advice welcomed.

Mike

Hi MIke,

I find the conversion a bit flat, not really contrasty enough, and not particulary significative.

But what hurts the most is the fact that the original in colour is such a gorgeous picture, that I would never consider desaturating. Why don't you work just a little bit on the colour version, it will give you a much more pleasent result.

Good stuff

Thanks Nathan - now you say it I can see it's a bit flat side by side.

I think I'll do both - work on colour and B&W.

Thanks

Mike

have to agree with nathan, colour is the way to go would have been happy to have taken it, or much more contrast to bring out the wheat at the front from the rest.

I was fairly happy to have taken it but irritated that I hadn't realised how close I was to the foreground stalk and was wondering why I couldn't get an AF lock. I was using the Sigma 10-20 and that main stalk was really close - too close drat it.

It was the cloud that caught me eye and then the field that seemed to be ideal. However, it was on the side of a hill which isn't obvious so in fact to make the shot look right I had to shoot at an angle to negate that slope.

Mike

I prefer the colour version too but would give it a contasty punch.




Bob

Probably slightly overdone again.. drat

Hmm that's interesting. It does look quite different. But you've dome more than just boost the contrast - no? Have you desaturated a little as well?

Mike

Like this?

The actual process was:

Copy the layer
desaturate top layer (can use your favourite conversion method)
Increase contrast of top layer
sharpen top layer (to give a local contrast boost)
Set top layer mode to "overlay" or "luminosity"
Reduce top layer opacity to 50% or so
Merge layers

It's tricky finding a balance using a small picture & I've overdone the contrast.
I'd be tempted to add a slight vignette too, would add to the black clouds.

Prefer the colour, but why have you flipped it?

Cheers,

Howard

I think I prefer the composition of your flipped shot too Mike, dunno why ?

I flipped it because I was messing about try to stitch the colour and B&W into one image which looked pretty awful

Do you prefer the contrasty colour to the initial one?

Mike

Plus you've done an excellent job on the crops in your version. Did I overcomplicate things (again) ?

Well all I did was whack up the contrast and tone down the saturation using new layers on the background. I wasn't sure why (or how it has to be said) you duplicated the background layer and then worked on that separate to the initial background layer.

I wish I didn't spell the as teh every bloody time.

Mike

How does this look?




Some localised desaturation on wheat.

It's a process I've been playing with, but I generally desaturate a little more & cross process colours. I've got an application in mind for the technique so I'm having a play around.

You can duplicate a layer in the "layer" menu at the top, then experiment with layer modes.

Bob

I like that last version, but then I'm a sucker for contrast & I'm sure many will disagree.

I think you'll find that a B&W conversion of the latest image will also look alot less flat, just to drag this thread back on topic