Alfies street shot tweaked with my approach to B&W conversion in LR

[Hamish Gill]

I asked Alfie if i could tinker with one of his wonderful street portraits.
Since he doesn't have the same version of lightroom I thought i would write a little bit about my process and post it as a thread for perhaps some dicussion on my techniques in the hope that I might get something out of this as well as Alfie.
This is Alfie's shot that i really liked

The original thread http://www.realphotographersforum.com/people-portraits/5326-candid-street-portraits.html

he sent me the dng file which i imported into LR4 and cropped in a similar way

I had a tinker and this is what I came up with

I cant show the process step by step with the effects as they are added but if you look at the side bar you can see what I have done

The first step was to adjust the exposure and contrast etc
I found that allowing any of the background elements to clip to white made them very distracting so as you can see here whilst there are lost shadows (denoted by blue) there are no lost highlights (usually shown by red). In case you aren't aware, pressing the "j" key in lightroom switches on the feature for showing lost highlights and shadows
Something I very often do in b&w conversions is to adjust the curves just in shadows and just in the darkest shadows. In lr4 i have found that upping the shadows and dropping the blacks in combo with this is a nice way to achieve a nice feel to the contrast. a similar effect could be had in previous versions of lr using fill light in the same way. (shadows replaced fill light in LR4)
The big boost to clarity is almost a must for me in B&W too

Here you can see my very subtle vignette settings and sharpening (note the use of 100 highlights on the vignette - this stops much of that greying to the highlights i mentioned i dont like)

I wanted to bring a bit more attention to the eyes ... i have infact over cooked it a little

first a local adjustment to lighten the area under the cap

some ott local adjustments to the eyes them selves ... i wouldn't recommend going this far if printing

I wanted to emphasise the reflection in the water so a local adjustment was applied there in this pattern twice over - 100% clarity then 70% clarity

the waterfall also needed bringing out a touch

instead of using the vignette control i often use a series of grads with a veriety of different settings
clarity in this case helped darken the dark parts of the background and make them a little stronger

same again with this one but with also a drop in shadows

and again

just shadows here but also a tweak up in exposure

then a tweak down in exposure to take some emphasis off the bit of concrete lower right foreground

And thats the lot!
I hope that is clear enough Alfie ... and indeed the sort of "look" you were going for!
Im very interested to hear your thoughts ... and anyone else's for that matter
I know i have used a lot of features that aren't in Lr2 but hopefully there is enough info for you to be able to translate backward

 

[Hamish Gill]

... If i do this again, ill show the effect of each setting as I go along ... i just didnt think to this time ...
Also if anyone can find the time to do this with any of thier images i would be really very interested to see how people do what they do!

 

[alfie Wright]

Only just spotted this, well just had a quick shower after my step daughter asked me to open a bottle of fizzy pop for her, little did I know she'd given it a little shake first. I didn't find it quite so funny as the kids did!!

Many many thanks, Hamish, my own personal LR tutorial! Very interesting & informative. It makes my much smaller tweaks look a little lazy. Even in a more modern version of Lightroom it's very interesting to see just how someone else works. While my version has a few bits/sliders missing I should be able to add some of this to my PPing.

Wow! That's very good. Overall you've definitely got the darks/shadows to where I wanted to get them & in the process you've also achieved more detail & texture to the fabrics he's wearing. He also seems to pop better from the the slightly OOF background which adds nicely to the image. The way you've worked with grads to darken the background works well & not something I'd thought to try. The work with the adjustment brush on the eyes & reflection in the water feature I like, but for me are perhaps just a little strong. I find the reflection a little distracting & wonder if a little less would be more. I think similar perhaps about the eyes, I like the fact that you've added light there, but a little too much maybe for me, I quite like shadow that the hat gives so might of looked for a little more balance & a little less light. On the whole you've managed to add quite abit more interest to the image than I did & I really like what you've done & will be trying alot of this in my PP in the future.

Overall I'm really very impressed with what you've done & have a bit more insight to what can be done in LR. This has been a very interesting excercise that I've learned alot from. Again very many thanks!

 

[alfie Wright]

I'm still studying the images, but forgot to mention that your tighter crop makes for a far stronger image & something else I need to look at & work at. This has been quite a lesson for me! Thanks again.

 

[Hamish Gill]

No problem ... its a great image and was a pleasure to work on!
I agree that the effect on the eyes is too strong, it just works for web but would look terrible printed large!
I quite like the effect on the water ... but it is of course subjective, and depends what you the person editing want to get out of the image, I quite like the idea that there is something behind him going on that he isnt looking at (as i said in the original thread) so thats what i wanted to emphasise a little ...
thats the fun of this lark eh... we all interpret these things differently... its what makes this place and the constructive criticism we give each other work so well i think!

As for detail, its all about sharpening and "clarity" they are actually often where i start on an image!

In reality, there are loads of things that can be done in LR, like everything, practice makes better, but if i have shown a few tricks that of helped you on that path then im very pleased ...

You just need LR4 now

 

[Hamish Gill]

I'm still studying the images, but forgot to mention that your tighter crop makes for a far stronger image & something else I need to look at & work at. This has been quite a lesson for me! Thanks again.

My gut response when i first saw the image was that the crop was a little loose (does that work as the opposite of tight?)
I think i mentioned it on one of the other shots?

for this sort of portrait cropping at the waist line always seems a little loose to me ... ?

 

[Dan Cattermole]

A brilliant job you've done there Hamish, and most of all, Top job for the shot Alfie.

Liking the process of PP you've displayed Hamish.

 

[Hamish Gill]

I'm interested to know if anyone else uses any of the techniques I do ...
You get into a way of doing these things and never really know what anyone else does.

 

[adrian jordin]

My inclination with this is to crop right down to the face, a fairly tight head and shoulders.
The lighten the shadows below the brim of the cap around the eyes, and also below the jawline.
Then you can adjust the rest of the toning to suit personal preference.

But thats just my opinion....

 

[Hamish Gill]

Unless Alfie minds why don't you follow the link to the original thread, download the dng and show us Adrian?

 

[adrian jordin]

First a caveat...I don't use Lightroom, but you should be able to pick up the essentials since I doubt the controls are going to vary too much in the essentials..

firstly the final image...

IMGP3048_1 by jordin57, on Flickr

OK, I'm working from the orginal RAW (thanks, Alfie), using RawTherapee, an open source raw processor.
Below is the image after my standard tweaks. You can see what I've changed in the history section on the left.
The black point usually has most effect, adding a bit more punch to tones and the rest is just to personal taste.
There is a lot more I could change, but I tend to do that in PS/Topaz rather than here.
I could also crop the picture here, but I tend to do that only if I'm certain about the crop, otherwise I prefer to play in PS.


raw1 by jordin57, on Flickr

This is saved out as a tif file which I then open in PS.
Duplicate the background, and crop as desired.
I then open the file in Topaz B+W and start with my custom preset. If I don't like the effect (it doesn't suit every picture), I'll reset everything and try some other presets to find a starting point. In this case I stuck with my custom preset.

The image below will show the key settigs in Topaz.....


topaz by jordin57, on Flickr

The 'adaptive exposure' and 'finishing touches' are part of the preset and control the tones and enhancement of the image detail.
For this image I also used a 'local adjustment' around the eyes and jawline, you can see roughly where from the mask at the bottom.

When everything is as I want it I return to PS and save the flattened image.

Hope this makes sense, let me know if it doesn't...

 

[alfie Wright]

Unless Alfie minds why don't you follow the link to the original thread, download the dng and show us Adrian?

No, I don't mind at all. In fact it's good to see how others work & see other software in action. I'll leave the file up on the other thread for a week or two, if anyone else wants to have a play & show their take on B&W conversion.

 

[alfie Wright]

Hi Adrian,

Not sure if it's my browser playing up, but I can't see the images in your post. I'm off out now, but will have a look later.

 

[adrian jordin]

The images look fine from this end, even when I'm not logged in..
Anyonbe else having problems?

 

[Darren Bradley]

Thanks for the tutorials, guys. Nicely done.

It looks like Hamish and I have similar approaches to our work flows in LR.

 

[Hamish Gill]

Great minds... and all that

 

[alfie Wright]

The images look fine from this end, even when I'm not logged in..
Anyonbe else having problems?

Hi Adrian,

I have been having ISP problems the last couple of days! Seems OK today, I can see the images now.

I think your final image is very nice, but with the capture not being that good, in that he looked over before I had time to recompose after focusing & being 3 or 4 steps to far away, the crop is a little small & perhaps a little over sharpened for what I'm looking for.

What is very intereting is seeing RawTherapee & Topaz B&W in action. LR 2 seems not to be able to work up the blacks & shadows anywhere near as nice as Hamish has in LR 4. In LR 2 the blacks & fill light sliders seem to work against each other rather than together. I really like LR, but my old XP PC needs to be replaced before I can upgrade to LR 4 & I may have a look at RawTherapee in the mean time. Thanks for your tutorial, very interesting for a beginner at PP.