Jun Park was kind enough to encourage me to try converting some of my old boats to B & W. I created a new gallery at old_boats_b__w Photo Gallery by Ken Regier at pbase.com
This is one conversion and am hoping you will all be as critical as possible so that I can improve.
Thanks,

[HogRider]

I am not a good critic. All I can say is, that I like this image very much.

[Buddha Jones]

For me it seemed to light, more light than dark, not enough contrast I guess. I pulled it into PS and added a couple layer masks to try and bring out some of the detail in the picture.
Can you edit you post and put up the original please?

[Jun Park]

I like what you've done!

[NaClH2O]

Hi Ken,
I find B&W conversion hard to do. I like your gallery especially the old lobster boat(?) img 1388 nice lines in the boat and a nice conversion. As for "Tess..." above, I have to agree with Buddha Jones in that it's a bit too light. Maybe more mid level contrast? And drop the highlights a bit? I hope you don't mind; this is sorta the look I'm talking about:


NaCl(done in PSE 3, "shadows highlights" lightened shadows, darkened highlights and raised midlevel contrast)H2O

[atupdate]

Ken,

Your conversion is pretty good and all I can offer is how to change it to my personal taste. I did this conversion from your color image above. The steps I used are listed below the image.

Tim



1) Mask/Select the sky
2) Sky - Channel Mixer Layer: 100% Red 0% Green 0% Blue Set for monochrome (This helps to darken the sky)
3) Sky - Levels Layer: Change white input from 255 to 230 (This helps to brighten the clouds)
4) Inverse Mask/Selection (Time to work on the boat)
5) Boat - Channel Mixer Layer: 21% Red 63% 16% Blue Set for monochrome (This is my default B&W Conversion setting which I adjust according to the most dominate color - no need to adjust for this image)
6) Boat - Brightness/Contrast Layer: -5 Brightness +25 Contrast.
7) Good Luck.

[regken]

This site is such a great help. I went back to the original DNG in Lightroom and played with the grayscale mixer which I totally missed before. Got the contrast up by using the different color sliders. I then used Ben's method in Photoshop to sharpen it up a little. Posted the revised version along with my first try. It looks better to me, what do you think?

regards,

[atupdate]

Sure, start with the full size original to show us all up;-)

Nice conversion! I think you have a keeper. Have you tied Ben's method on the color version to see how much it pops?

Tim

[regken]

I redid it with Ben's method and posted but to tell you the truth I think I had already used his method on the first colored one.

Regards,

[Sailor]

Ken, I never met a picture of a boat I didn't like, but I love the B&W shot in the upper right-hand corner of your OP. Some of the other B&W conversions are striking, but a bit edgy. I think you had it right the first time.

Jer

[atupdate]

Ken, I never met a picture of a boat I didn't like, but I love the B&W shot in the upper right-hand corner of your OP. Some of the other B&W conversions are striking, but a bit edgy. I think you had it right the first time.

Jer

Don't forget, we were working off a 67kb image posted on the internet. Things would have looked a lot less edge if we had the orginal file to work with. ;-)

Tim

[Photochop]

I think you did a great job with the B+W conversion. My personal preference is to have a little more contrast, Buddha did an excellent job with that.

Oh and BTW, great shot, I like it very much!