Inspiring

Question

Workflow for B&W photographs

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
February 5, 2022
4 replies
1879 views

I have been taking RAW images of old B&W prints (historical archives)

I include on most occasions an 18% grey card so I have a reference.

I take the pictures in RAW, typical sequence is

Import

set White balance (against the 18% grey card)

crop, straighten,

adjust levels

adjust contrast

apply sharpening

Is there an optimum tine to switch to B&W ?

at what point

Windows

This topic has been closed for replies.

GoldingD

Legend

For B&W, I would export/edit in a third party app for B&W. Specifically NIK Silver Efex (DxO)

If I am working with a normal RAW, that is, color in LrC, I would do a minimal LrC post processing. Set Color Profile, set WB, adjust Brightness, adjust Blacks and Whites to get a good B/W point, tweek the tonal curve, then Edit in Silver Efex.

In Silver Efex I would pick a film simulation, select a filter if any, and look at the Dark and Light zone, fix where desired.

__________________________

If working with a scan of a print or slide, hmmmm. Maybe less in LrC before sending to Silver Efex.

R

richardplondon

Community Expert

There are two ways to employ Silver Efex (or other similar utility): as a direct external-edit, or by sending to Photoshop as your external edit and then employing the Silver Efex utility inside that (layered) environment.

IMO the latter method makes more sense, and permits additional nondestructive options e.g. detailed retouching and compositing, and perhaps selective masking of the Silver Efex conversion, within that context - a unified workflow IOW. This has the side merit of reducing the number of derived versions, and separately saved TIFFs, potentially involved.

D

DS256

Inspiring

You received some great suggestions here.

I'm scanning some old B&W photos for a project my wife is working on. Here are some additional things to try:

I find that processing may introduce an artifical tint which is corrected when switch to B&W.
As with a lot of old photos, the focus is not sharp and/or there is motion induced fuzziness. I was please to find the dehaze help correct that.
Texture has also helped with the B&W photos I'm scanning.

T

TaffladAuthor

Inspiring

That is what I found you process and it ends up with a brown tint.

Then when you switch to B&W it is corrected - hence I was not sure if changing to B&W should be earlier in processing steps.

On DeHaze ... do you as in applying a DeHaze preset ?

Could you explain what you mean by 'Texture has also helped' I am using Lightroom Classic, not aware of a Texture feature.

T

TaffladAuthor

Inspiring

My LR version is 6.1.4 not aware of any new features in some years

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

It's important to realize that the sequence you apply edits in Lightroom does not matter for how the algorithm actually operates. It always does everything in the same order regardless of when you moved a slider in your workflow. It doesn't matter if you first do sharpening, and then B&W or first B&W and then do sharpening. Only thing that might matter is the white balance which you should do before you switch but it actually probably doesn't matter at all whether you do it or not as you apply a B&W profile anyway and you are photographing monochome images. Only times the white balance would matter is when you would like to retain the specific tint of the original print (it's never really precisely grey but always has some kind of tint that can even depend on the density of black in an area) but then of course you do not want to apply a black and white profile.

R

richardplondon

Community Expert

Just to add to this, especially for faded prints, it may be more successful to post-process in colour mode even if it was a B&W original that you have scanned. There may be better separation of tones achievable. For example if there has been yellowing of the paper substrate of the print but not so much, or differently, to the solids or dyes in the emulsion - then that hue difference constitutes extra and usefully distinguishable picture information, over and above the pure tones. You can thus to some extent selectively enhance the contrast of true photo detail while suppressing the contrast of spurious detail from paper scuffing or whatever.

So personally I scan / re-photograph to colour even when the original print was monochrome;

stay with a colour profile rather than a monochrome profile inside LrC;

use the HSL panel to desaturate all colour ranges (I use a preset) so far as the live preview;

play around further with WB, with per-channel Luminance in the HLS panel, as well as other colour controls - plus of course the standard tone-based methods.

Interacting with that, another interesting method is to fiddle with the R G and B hue response sliders in the Calibration panel.

Regardless whether this was from an original colour photo or from something that started as monochrome - by temporarily bringing the Saturation sliders back up, things may well look very weird - but so what, this is all towards a B&W 'account' that you like when those are all down at zero: IOW, whatever works for the result.