BnW Image Effect

[Evil Nemesis]

Hi I would Love to know how to achieve this kind of b&w effect , I tried greyscale , threshold but no luck, better yet is there a filter to do an effect like this ?

waiting for reply, thanks :banghead:

 

[peta62]

I would go with B&W adjustment layer, since you can play with individual colours there. And I think contrast was increased too.

 

[Evil Nemesis]

Thanks that was close maet, I just tried your both suggestions and got almost the same result, if you have time plz go into details, +1

 

[peta62]

I do not know whether there is anything else I can write, it strongly depends on the picture. I would start with B&W adjustment layer and maybe set it a little bit, than add contrast adjustment and get it from its point as close as possible to what I want to get. Then I would return to B&W, because different details are made from different colours, so modifying their setup should tune up the result. If yu cannot get there exactly, maybe add Curves adjustment layer.

 

[Evil Nemesis]

well with your tutorial this is the best I could get , thank, but as you can what can I do with his right side of face as it's still in greyscale mode (co'z it has shadows I guess) history and doge / burn tools also play role into this.

 

[peta62]

First I think you have picked a totally different picture. The first one is sharp with a lot of detail, where would be something else is just black. You have picture with few details, plenty of blurry stuff.

Second the first picture is darker and has more contrast.

 

[ibis]

what i usually do making them b/w is to do desaturation
and than just play with contrast and shadows/highlight setting.
there's no general rule but your own preference, but this way
you may achieve just anything.

 

[Evil Nemesis]

First I think you have picked a totally different picture. The first one is sharp with a lot of detail, where would be something else is just black. You have picture with few details, plenty of blurry stuff.

Second the first picture is darker and has more contrast.

yeah mate I know I was only talking about the subject.

@ibis

I will try that approach soon , as I get free from installing windows 8 and bunch of softwares first.

 

[peta62]

ibis :
I think and this in not only from my onw head, I saw it in some tutorial ( Lynda or Kelby ) too, if you just desaturate, you loose the option to play with particular colours, which is sometimes very helpful.

Evil Nemesis :
I do not see either that much detail or sharpness in the face, but it might have been in the original, can you post it ?
Wow I do not like Win7, I wish I had stayed with XP and you already go to Win8, that is brave. ;-)

 

[Evil Nemesis]

yup just came back after installing win8 and some softwares, it took me 2 hours to do so, anyway I don't know how on earth you're sticking with winxp I tried it once after using win7 ultimate for 1 year and I thought how could I'd be using this for years, lolz Win7 was awesome mate and now I will test win8 for few days and then see how is it, well then again it's all about matter of choice,

back on topic : yup you're right the image wasn't much detailed as I took this image "Michael Ironside" (Actor in many movies including terminator salvation and this guy has voiced sam fisher in splinter cell games till sc:conviction, just in case if someone doesn't know) from internet , i'm attaching it now, take a look

 

[peta62]

yup just came back after installing win8 and some softwares, it took me 2 hours to do so, anyway I don't know how on earth you're sticking with winxp I tried it once after using win7 ultimate for 1 year and I thought how could I'd be using this for years, lolz Win7 was awesome mate and now I will test win8 for few days and then see how is it, well then again it's all about matter of choice,

back on topic : yup you're right the image wasn't much detailed as I took this image "Michael Ironside" (Actor in many movies including terminator salvation and this guy has voiced sam fisher in splinter cell games till sc:conviction, just in case if someone doesn't know) from internet , i'm attaching it now, take a look

True, absolutely, but I am a Unix person, that tells you my attitude towards any windows ;-)

The picture is extremely small, no detail, plus 2:30 a.m. here so the result cannot be better I think



Try to find something with better resolution and let me know what do you want better.

 

[peta62]

BTW you could go even here, but it really hits the low resolution and lack of detail hard.

 

[ibclare]

I'm a johnny come lately to this and haven't read all the posts, but just thought I'd offer this. And btw, I agree with peta, better resolution will help. But anyway, I just took your result, duplicated the layer and set it to linear burn. Just another somethin' to give a try. Incidentally, the photograph itself makes a big difference, not just the resolution . .. as you can see in your first post.

Here's the before and after:

 

[Evil Nemesis]

hi peta62 how you doing , your first image on top of this page has very dramatic (black) background but the subject has greyscale and no white pixels as well and your second attempt looked like a threshold to me but then again the first image's background is what I wanted to achieve as a background

@ibclare

your second image is superb and exactly what I want except the background

wowww mate what did you exactly do ? i'm attaching another image to experiment with high resolution this time

 

[peta62]

Background is no problem, you can just paint it black without any difficulties. I will try it with this one, but the guy is darker skinned, it may not look right with white in face.

 

[Evil Nemesis]

i see , so the first task is to make the face brighter ? here's what I could come up with by following your tutorial :

*Added B&W Adjustment Layer and fine tuned a bit
*Added Brightness / Contrast Layer and boosted the contrast almost full What about sky as you can see it's distored now ?
*Added Curves Adjustment Layer and boosted curves a bit

and hey it's not the guy, it's me

 

[peta62]

You look different than on your avatar

Addition to "manual", you must not loose details too soon.

 

[Evil Nemesis]

lolz, common now

 

[peta62]

So after mandatory work and delay caused by technical problems with computer I tried with your picture. I am not exactly sure what you want, or better to say what you want is probably not exactly possible again. I gave it a try, let me know.

It is a pitty, I cannot take a shot, I am much better photographer than Photoshoper ;-)

 

[peta62]

Second variation a bit darker