Pixiq

When it comes to black and white portraits, I generally like to make them as natural as I can. HDR gives me a lot of options.

That usually means good skin tone, hair tone, bright eyes, detailed shadows and no blown out highlights.

With digital, I like to start with a good color image that has been at least partially adjusted in Photoshop. The sample image of my good friend Walt is a good example. The image was first shot as a 3 EV HDR file that was captured using  a single exposure. Before I turn the image into a black and white, I do all of the preliminary work such as color correction, dodging and burning and any retouching in color. This gives me a full RGB base which is important for producing tonal adjustments and/or adjusting black and white filtration.

The example shows a color image that has a few areas that need special attention when converting the file into a black and white. My main concerns are getting the skin tone to look right as well as the contrasts of colors such as the shirt and background information. A third area that I feel is important for this image, is the camera at the bottom of the frame.

This first example black and white was created simply by lowering the color saturation to zero. In this particular case,the results are somewhat acceptable. However we can do much better. I find that the shirt and the hair do not quite meet the renditions that I would expect and the separation is too close to the skin color which is too dark. Also, the background and the camera have a few contrast problems that I would like to see fixed.

These adjustments can be made using a number of techniques which include a black and white adjustment layer and as well as a few other layer adjustments.

In the above example, the image was simply turned into a grayscale image. The image is lower in contrast and there are more than a few problems with tonal separations. The main problem here is that we cannot use any of the RGB color data to correct the tones. That is because we have thrown away all of the RGB data by turning the image into a grayscale. The tones also went darker and they are far from what I want to end up with as a final image. We might try some dodging and burning but it is very likely that it would not work out that well.

For this demo, I will be using NIK Silver Efex Pro Plug-in for Photoshop to help make my corrections. I want to demonstrate the effects of using color filtration to obtain the correct look.

The image above received a red filter effect in NIK Silver Efex pro. The shirt is way too dark and a lot of other detail has been lost. Just look at the camera and the shirt.

Here, a blue filter effect was used. Whoa! The shirt has been made lighter in tone because the filter which is blue, allows the blue to become lighter. The skintone is way too dark and the overall contrast is terrible. Walter looks a bit too old and is very likely to hate this image.

The image above was produced by applying a green filter to the image in NIK Silver Efex Pro. The resulting image allowed the shirt to go darker producing a nice separation between the shirt and the skin.

To me, this is the closest to the results I am looking for. In photoshop, I will do some minimal dodging and burning and additional post processing to get the final result based on this outcome.

To finish the image. I feel that a slight warm tone would enhance the image and create the final look I am after.

In NIK Silver Efex Pro, I add a warm tone using the sliders under stylizing. The effect is created in a layer above and all I need to do is reduce the layer to  a percentage of the effect to achieve my final look.

In the above example, I am intent on toning the image to a warm yellow. NIK Silver Efex Pro allows me to make subtle adjustments to both the image tone which is called silver and the whites which are referred to as paper.

Here is the final warm toned black and white image that I felt best represented the tonal scale I was looking for, the tonal coloration and the dynamic range I wanted to represent. The shirt has a better separation. The red line in the camera lens is visible. The hair looks right to me as does the skin.

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