Our Sadie

I'm currently a bit obsessed with B&W and have been trying to get better at editing in this style, mine always seem to look flat and bland. How do you get them to 'pop'?!?! Always, here are a few of our dog Sadie i've been working on. Feedback very welcome!

1.

Our Sadie-2 by pjwebbs, on Flickr

2.

Our Sadie-3 by pjwebbs, on Flickr

How to make them pop? You can follow on from the traditional way and apply digital filters, which simulate the effects of the glass filters we used to use (eg yellow & red for increased contrast and strengthening blues and greens).

Pentax Digital Camera Utility takes a direct approach to this, and mimics the black & white filters menu on the DSLRs - or you could apply them on the camera to JPEGs directly. Best to work on the main exposure and contrast first, taking care over the high & low contrast sliders to stretch the range nicely, then select and try out the various B & W filter options. It can all be done almost the same way in PDCU.

I personally use a control panel in Sagelight 4.0 dedicated to B & W - it comes within the 'Effects - HDR' section, but you are given fine control sliders over all the key aspects, including 'smart contrast', 'Definition', a reduce noise option, and a blend percentage slider which acts like a layer opacity control in PS - this allows you to blend the amount of the effect you are applying over the base image for very subtle control.

There are various other dedicated tools and techniques in the more common Adobe programmes, which I am sure some users of those will be glad to explain.

They look pretty good to me. If anything I would reign in the processing a bit, the blurring of the legs in the first looks too much to me. I think the bigger improvement here would be the framing rather than more pop - cut off paws look awkward.

Cant help but think they would be better in portrait orientation too to help get the paws in.

They look popped to me, razor sharp in fact.

I like the second one a lot, a lovely expressive poochand I like the empty space of the left of the shot more than if it had been portrait aligned

It is a shame that her front paw is a little cut off but I'd say that had it been in frame then the composition wouldn't have looked quite right?

My answer to this would have been to have been a little lower still maybe. Although it looks like if you'd gone down on your tummy she'd have got right up and licked you

HTH

Pete A

They look quite nice to me too. To get them to 'pop' I think the following are important:

- Get the focus 100% correct - on the eyes
- Choose the right aperture - nice and wide, but not at the expense of the performance of the lens
- Don't over-expose it!
- Choose the right lens, some examples that make images 'pop' are DA*50-135, SMC K55 F1.8, Sigma 105 DG EX Macro, Pentax DFA 100mm Macro, of course there are lots of others too
- Most importantly, get the background right

Regards
David

I think there are some good points made above, but I interpreted the OP as wanting advice on mono conversion, so I was rather looking forward to some tips on this in software other than those programs I've already mentioned.

All of the above, and try to get her to smile

Nice doggie