Peace Lilly

I've always liked B&W but have never been really happy with the final picture so don't bother to often.
Having been inspired by Paulyrichards B&W photos I thought I would have another go at it. I can't make up my mind if this is ok or needs further work, and if so what ?

Ecellent shot Steve with good tones and detail

The tones look great to me. Keep it up.
I always view my images on a black background, it helps for checkin' the tones much better than a white.

Thanks for your comments Tel & Pauly.

I'm interested to know what the best way of converting to B&W is, either in the raw converter or editing software (I use PSE5). I tend to do it in PSE5 because I like to save a colour version as well but I seem to get more control of the tones in the raw converter.

I never make permanent changes to my RAW files which is one reason I like Lightroom so much (all edits are saved as an XML sidebar file leaving the original RAW file untouched). I am not sure what BW conversion facilities are available in PSE5. In CS3/Lightroom the BW adjustment layer is the way to go. You can simply drag left or right to lighten or darken certain tones, e.g. if you want the blue skies dark (like using a red filter) just drag the mouse across the sky in one direction and it'll darken all the blues, drag the other way and it will lighten them. It also comes with a set of in-built "filters". John Beardsworth's "Advanced Digital Black and White Photography" is an excellent book on the subject.

Best wishes, Kris.

Kris

You have confused me. Surely you cannot make a permanent change to the raw file? I use Silkypix raw converter and yes when I open a previously worked on raw file it loads with the previous settings I used (WB;exp;contrast etc), but one click on the "default" button removes all my settings and allows me to start fron scratch again.

I do my RAW in either CS3 or CS4. I make the alterations then save it as a PSD, then pop the RAW and PSD into a seperate folder, doing it that way means that I always keep the RAW file unaltered.

Going back to the image, I would prefer more whites. The blacks are ok but in my opinion, not great. When I printed in the darkroom I always checked the whites against a blank sheet of white paper.
Maybe you like it the way you have done it, but, again personal choice, I would lighten the whites and maybe darken the blacks.


Paul

Ditto.

I agree also.

I've recently revisited some of my earlier RAW images taken with my K100D nearly a year ago because I feel I'm more experienced with the PP side of things now; and I'm better at getting the look I want if perhaps I did'nt manage it on the day.

I'm much more happier with some of my earlier work (mainly I converted more to B&W and played around a bit). But this would'nt have been possible of course if I had permanently changed the RAW images back then.

I am still at a loss to understand how you can permanently change a raw file?

In Silkypix or PSE I get options to save the output as jpeg;tiff;psd etc. None of this changes the raw file at all?

As Peter says I'm not changing the raw file by converting to B&W in the raw converter, just using the sliders for saturation, contrast etc to get the desired effect. The raw file can be opened again as shot.