Black and white conversion

[ChristerWe Profile]

Hi!

Just got the SPE and feel a bit disappointed with the black and white conversion in the program. It seems the only option is to totally desaturate the image, which is really a bad option. Perhaps I have missed something though, so would be great to find out if there are any more advanced options.

[eadams Profile]

Hi ChristerWe,

There are different ways to use SPE. The quickest and easiest way is to simply experiment with applying effects from the Effects Gallery to your image and see which results you like. There is a Black and White category containing effects which not only convert to black and white but which also perform other image enhancing tasks. You can achieve many different "looks" to your image by piling effects onto one another. For example, you can apply some color pop effects or apply an effect that enhances one color channel to your color image before applying a black and white effect to get a completely different result.

If you want more manual control over how your image is being processed, you can always go into the Effect Editor and create your own black and white effect from scratch which you can save to your computer and re-use at any time on any image. However, if you are not already an expert in image processing, there is a sharp learning curve to be able to use all the available image processing nodes effectively.

Eve

[ChristerWe Profile]

Thanks Eve for the reply! I think it would be great if one added functions to selectively modify the major colors separately, decreasing or increasing the lightness! As it is now, no person really seriously interested in photography would use this program for b&w conversion! It is a pity that the program is limited in this way. Using pre-formed actions/effects is not really of any use for b&w conversions since every image needs its own tweaking. So I would recommend using either the Nik or Topaz b&w conversion plugins.

[Arwin Profile]

Hi ChristerWe and Eve,

I agree with Eve, as soon you learn how SPE (and the effects) work, you have thousands of possibilities to tweak your black and white conversions.
Did you open one of the black and white effects in the editor ChristerWe? As their are no sliders for you to use to tweak you're B/W conversion directly at the effect, just open a tone-node, hue-saturation-brightness-node, black-and-white-node, or any other node in the editor (double click a node) to be able to tweak your image in any corner of the color palette.

As examples:
Add a sample in the black-and-white-node (Numbers of samples slider), click on the effect-input-node, click and drag your mouse from the color-box to any color on your image to play around with the specific color conversion.

Tweak shadows, darks, lights, highlights and many more options found in the Tone-node.

Tweak Exposure, Vibrance, Saturation and many more options in the hue-saturation-brightness-node.

Tip: As soon you open the options of the node (by double clicking a node) do a single click on the effect-output-node to see your adjustments of the node in the whole chain.

Hope this gives you a good idea how to work with SPE in B/W.

Arwin

[ChristerWe Profile]

Thanks very much Arwin!! I haven't tried any of this so will test tomorrow! Sounds like I missed some interesting possibilities!!

Christer W

[Arwin Profile]

You're welcome ChristerWe,

Just some words to add, to enter the effect editor for a specific effect, right-click the effect-tab and choose for Manual Edit (like the image below)

EffectTab.jpg (24.69 KiB) Viewed 17951 times

To enter the effect editor to make your own effects from scratch, choose for the effect editor in the menu on the right-side of your screen.



Here are some tutorial vids you might like to watch:
Smart Photo Editor - Effects Editor - Getting Started


Classic Selective Color on Black & White


Smart Photo Editor - How To Select Areas - 3


Smart Photo Editor - How To Use Layers - 4


And if you have time, here are all official tutorial videos and here are some I created.

Have fun
Arwin

[ChristerWe Profile]

Thanks again Arwin!

I just have had time to look a bit at the editor, but rralize I need more time to get into it better. So hope I will be able to do that later on. However, the links you included in the post does not show up as any videos on my computer, I only get to a blank page with these options on the left hand side of the browser window:

[eadams Profile]

ChristerWe, the links work perfectly for me. When you click on the link, what address is shown in your browser address field? I am grateful for this discussion because it pointed me to these great videos by Arwin

[ChristerWe Profile]

Hi Eve, interestingly the links on my PC (using Firefox as a browser) linked me to photoeditor.anthropics.com, while on my iPad they pointed me to the right places with the tutorials! I did test again now on my PC, and it still links wrong. Very strange, but now I can get to see the videos anyhow

Christer W

[Arwin Profile]

Strange indeed Christer, the links work correct at my side like Eve said, but glad to know you managed to find the correct links by using your iPad.

In any case, here are the links as full url: https://vimeo.com/anthropics/albums , https://vimeo.com/user20333944/videos

Arwin