Black and White Image Conversions: Part 1

Everyone has their own twist or take on converting colour images to black & white images. Although there are many pieces of software that have the ability to do these conversion I will be dealing with DxO PhotoLab 5. xxx for the initial RAW conversion and then the two different black & white conversions. One conversion was done using NIK's Silver Effects Pro's Preset at 000 Neutral setting and the other was done using a FujiFilm Preset, Acros.

This is the original colour image:

This is one black & white conversion:

This is the other black & white conversion:

Converting a colour image into monochrome, aka black & white, is a very subjective process. We all see colours differently so I am going to go out on a limb here and say the same applies to viewing black & white images.

Back in the film days, most of what I shot was done using black & white films whether is was using large format cameras, medium format cameras or small format cameras. Small format cameras are what most people use today - aka DSLR cameras and Mirror-Less cameras. I don't even know where to place the micro 4/3 cameras - obviously a sub-set of the small format cameras. More on all this later but the point I am trying to get at is for over 30 years I had a black & white darkroom and all my personal stuff was shot on black & white film - using coloured filters over my lenses allowed for artistic interpretation and so many of us used filters on a regular basis. For example, I used a yellow filter over my lenses when ever I was photographing anything with people in the photos. No, it did not turn my black & white photos yellow but rather lightened Caucasian skin tones. The colour of the filter lightens the colours in the image or scene depending on the density of the filter itself. For example, if you want to turn the green foliage in the scene lighter, try using a green filter over you lens if you are shooting I black & white.

I will dig deeper into this topic in the second part of this article shortly. In the meantime, please tell me which of the black & white conversions do you like better - remember these are using straight presets from within the software itself. Also, in the second part I will tell you which one is was made using NIK's Silver Effects Pro and which one was made using FujiFilm's Acros preset.