Thread: Total "newb" question about software

Luke, if you have a photo editor that has a channel mixer facility then that's probably the best way to start black and white conversion, though there are several ways over and above a straight desaturation, and as you rightly imply, considerably cheaper options as well.

Barrie

Originally Posted by grebeman

Luke, if you have a photo editor that has a channel mixer facility then that's probably the best way to start black and white conversion, though there are several ways over and above a straight desaturation, and as you rightly imply, considerably cheaper options as well.

Barrie

And Lightroom, which you already have, has a great set of tools plus the ability to add presets: paid, free, and home-brewed.

I haven't used Silver Efex but I really like the look of them. Briar would be a good person to ask about it. I didn't want to shell out the money or download illegally. Any contrasty B/W stuff I play with is through Snapseed - cheap and cheerful, extremely easy to use, brilliant on ipad, or through my main software which is Aperture.

Good software is cheap compared to a new camera or lens. I wonder if my most significant photographic purchase last year wasn't the Olympus E-M5, Canon G1X, or Panasonic 25mm f1.4 lens, but was instead Lightroom 4 for doing raw conversions. One key difference is that the first three only started working for me from the day that I bought them, but software like LR4 (and the Nik plugins which I already had) can be used on every digital image you've ever taken.

Many of the great photographers (say Ansel Adams or Edward Weston) probably spent more time in their darkrooms manipulating their projected negatives to create the images we admire than they did out with their camera, which I think correlates rather nicely with Nic's thoughts about software. I saw a video clip the other day which showed the negative of the famous Adams shot "Moonrise over Hernandez" which required a great deal of manipulation to achieve the famous image.

Barrie

The more things change, the more they remain the same. I remember folks buying really nice film cameras and lenses only to buy a cheap enlarger to print with or send the film out to the local drug store.

Still, the greatest enlarger in the world is no good if you don't have the skills.

Adams always moaned that he spent as much time in the darkroom as he did in the field. There is nothing that I can think of that plug-ins can give you over manipulating by hand in a basic post processing program, other than plug-in are easier and faster, but at a loss to the user of experience, skill development and originality/individual style.

Originally Posted by Gary

Adams always moaned that he spent as much time in the darkroom as he did in the field.

The guy could just never get it right in the camera. He should have practiced more with his exposures. I hate that "I will get it right in the darkroom" mentality.

;)

LOL!!!!!!!!!!! He wasn't an OOC JPEG guy.

No, he was just too cheap to send his film out to be developed.