Kamil Kisiel
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 p.2 #1 · Sharing B/W Workflows | |
Here's a pretty extensive rundown of my workflow:
1. Import in to Lightroom
2. Switch to "greyscale" treatment
3. Adjust the exposure slider until the histogram is as far right as it will go without clipping
4. Adjust the blacks slider to pick a good black point for the image
5. Use the brightness slider to adjust the actual brightness of the image since step 2 can often leave it too bright.
6. Adjust the contrast slider until there is a good separation between the light and dark tones
7. Adjust the clarity slider until the image has the right amount of "pop" without any weird artifacts in high contrast areas. This is very subject dependent as some subjects look better with lower clarity.
8. Next I move on to the tone curve and basically add and move around points until the various areas of the image are showing the detail I want. This is what I use to bring out more detail in the dark tones or bring down some highlights. In other images, I bring down shadows and bring up highlights to get an S shaped curve that gives a high contrast kind of look.
9. This part is really the essence of the black and white conversion process for me. The previous steps can be applied equally well to color images. I spend a lot of time playing with the different "grayscale mix" sliders. Each one controls the contribution of every color to the grayscale output. You can really fine tune how the colors appear in your image. For example I can turn down the green slider if I want to make grass look dark and not glow much, or I can crank up the same slider if I want grass that looks almost white.
10. I occasionally go for split toning, but it depends on the look of the image I'm going for.
11. I usually add at least a bit of vignette to almost every image. I know some photographers make a big deal about having no vignetting etc, but I find that I like the look especially if it is subtle. In some cases I make it not so subtle. Again, depends on the image.
12. Finally I tweak the preliminary sharpening settings. This is only the basic "in-camera" type sharpening and the final sharpening will be applied in the output stage during the export dialog. I use this mainly to make sure detailed parts of the image are looking reasonably crisp. It's important not to overdo it here otherwise after the second stage sharpening your image will look quite bad.
13. I double check the histogram to make sure there's no significant amount of undesired clipping.
14. Leave the image in my Lightroom catalog for a day or two.
15. Come back to look at it again, go through all the steps to tweak anything I don't like any more.
16. Leave it for a couple more hours, come back to it once more.
17. If I'm satisfied, export for web, post to my gallery.
Usually before print I'll go through the recheck process again, since I usually find things I'd like to tweak here and there. For print I also usually export to TIFF and make some minor edits in photoshop, although with Lightroom 2.0 this is hardly necessary due to the addition of the spot healing and brush tools.
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