Tips for converting pix to black & white? (1 Viewer)

I have a Nikon D70 and Photoshop 7, and have been spending a lot of time trying to tweak into b&w some pictures I've taken of the kids. A few questions for you guys:

1. Should I capture the photos in RAW or JPEG, or does it make a difference if I'm doing post-processing?
2. To convert to b&w, I've been going into PS, converting to greyscale, and then playing around with the curves function. Are there any tips to finding a good tonal curve or is it just a matter of seeing what I like?
3. I read there are some plug-ins for PS that are exclusively for converting to b&w -- are these just custom curves or do they do other things?
4. Is it okay to give a JPEG greyscale image to the print shop or should I be saving it in another format?

Thanks!

Most of my answer is going to consist of sending you to another forum that specifically deals with imaging (I hope you don't mind).

1.& 4. I think this is dependent upon how big a final print you're looking for. For 4x6 or 5x7 prints, I don't think it will make a difference. For 11x14s, I think you want to preserve as much information as possible along the way--this would imply avoiding jpeg.

1. www.photo.net/equipment/nikon/D70/ "It can be seen that the RAW path does preserve some image sharpness, over the JPEG image."

2. At the end of the day, the only important thing is that you like what you see.

3. Not really an answer to the question, but some interesting things:

Filter effects:
But by shooting in color and processing digitally you can effectively add filters to your image, which you could not have done if you had taken the pictures in B&W to begin with. http://www.photo.net/photo/sepia/indexwww.photo.net/equipment/filters.html#Black This effect can be added by adding, for example, a red layer in Photoshop before converting to grayscale.

Sepia effect:
www.photo.net/photo/sepia/index

I hope this helps.

Another popular technique to convert to B/W is to apply a Channel Mixer adjustment layer and select monochrome on that control panel. Then you can adjust the red, green and blue channels to your liking. Converting to grayscale can make the image flat or lacking in contrast, where Channel Mixer will allow you to tweak that to your liking.

Here's a tutorial of what to do:

http://luminous-landscape.com/tutori...w_better.shtml

That's a very cool site Man-Fai. It's nice to see the channel combinations for the types of filters.

Brian,

I have a Nikon CP4500, and I don't know about the D70, but it has a B&W setting that takes and stores B&W pictures in a higher resolution. I haven't really checked the following, but I'd swear it also has a better gamma resolution in that mode.

Doesn't the D70 have the same option? If it does, you should certainly try it out.


Cees

Cees,

I don't believe the D70 has that option, unfortunately. I will check though.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions!