Originally posted by yorik Interesting - I never thought of following Silver Efex with Color Efex... I'm going to have to try that!
(Very nice shot, by the way)
Thank you yorik! I'm trying to remember when I stumbled upon this workflow so I can say intelligent things about it ...oh! Yes!
I saw some delicate, crisp monochrome shots of a baby that had been rendered in a perfect replacement of chocolate brown for black, without any dull-contrast "in-camera-sepia-setting" look. They had everything I love about excellent BW photography - the clean uncluttered visual field, but warm, almost velvety. I was instantly on a mission - how to replace the black with color in just that crisp, velvet way. Silver Efex gives you complete control of black point & structure during the BW conversion, and that makes the crisp-delicate-clear parts
so much easier. By making the black end of the levels curve reeeally black, and then adjusting the curve to bring the grays back up to the standard diagonal or even a little lighter, you can then run the monochrome through any tint process you want and have rich looking color without having the whole photo look like you water colored over it and killed the contrast. 'Color Stylizer' in Color Efex gives you everything you need to tint quickly and precisely - pick any color (get as close to the original contrast values as you can...not easy :P), adjust contrast, shadows & highlights individually to tune the photo to the same contrast you started with, or something with more punch or more subtlety. (I should mention, tint with less-saturated very dark colors if you want anything that looks natural
The shots below were tinted with browns or blues so dark the color on the color picker looked almost black, and well into the gray end of the saturation spectrum.)
This may be my favorite shot I've ever taken, and it wouldn't exist without this chocolate process. In color? It's a mess - the setting was just too busy, cause this was a pool-side candid. But with really careful black point, a green filter and then chocolate tint, everything that's amazing about this beautiful child leaps off the screen. (K-x)
If you blow out the mid-range until skin tones are almost flat, this processing almost glows. This is my youngest - just a quick candid with a truly
abysmal kit-lens that became a totally different photo when I processed it. (K-x)
I worked up a gritty, grainy version of the look for my street/landscape photos (X-E1):
I got my settings mixed up one day and found if I had exactly the right blue, light skin tones looked amazing (X100).
(while waiting for the above photo to come together, his little sister photobombed - I love it LOL! There are a lot of times when I really adore the fact that the Fuji cameras *don't* autofocus quickly, cause oof shots like this are so perfect.)
(I kept revising this post and finally gave it up and went into
a lot more detail on my blog :P)