Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Rings In Black And White


So here's what I ended up doing - I went back and used the green filter in the black and white conversion of Photoshop CS 3 - it's been my experience that this is the best result when converting rust to black and white. I did tone it down a bit by using a second black and white conversion above it with no filter, then using the opacity slider for the green filtered layer to tone down the green filtering a bit. I more or less did the things I planned in the previous discussion, though found that if I toned down the lower left corner it didn't look right, so I lightened the upper right a little and undid the effect in the bottom left. In total there were about 10 adjustment layers after the black and white conversion, applying various curves locally.

7 comments:

Lee said...

hi George,

i think you nailed this image.

i am pretty quiet on your blog although i read it regularly. if i don't have anything unique to add to the discussion i'd rather stay quiet, but i'm always here: reading and considering.

getting these abstract forms to work right is quite a challenge. i'm not currently any good at it myself (i shoot a completely different style: street photography) but i like to read your thoughts about how you try to accomplish certain abstract effects within your photos. it helps me to appreciate your successes so much more...

...and i think this is one of the best images i've seen on your blog for a while. i have a very visceral, emotional reaction to it, even if i can't currently explain all of why (i'll have to come back and consider it some more). anyway, i thought you deserved some "vocalized" congratulations for making this image work so well. keep it up.

George Barr said...

Lee:

much appreciated. I'm pretty excited about it too. I'm intrigued that you are a street photographer, something I can't even see me beginning - too shy, too awkward, seems invasive, what if people get upset etc. etc.

Perhaps you'd like to write an essay on what it's like to shoot the street and I can publish it here. I suspect your comments would be helpful to others. Doesn't matter if you are an old hand or expert, just the process and goals and so on would be great.

Unknown said...

I´m too much in love with the color-version :)

Greetings from munich! Bo

PS: got the same problem with street photography. Looking forward to an article from Lee ;)

Lee said...

i'd be happy to write a bit about street photography if you'd like me to, George. i've got a lot of unorganized thoughts about the whole process floating about in my head and it'd be good to have an excuse to shape them into something more understandable.

George Barr said...

Lee:

contact me directly by email george dot barr at shaw dot ca

George

Anonymous said...

Hi George,

I really like the before/after views that you publish - especially this one.
I guess this is not really the purpose of your blog, but I would really appreciate if you could explain in detail the work that you did under Photoshop. Could you, for example, post a screenshot of the layers of the photoshop file and explain it? That would really help us understand what you have done!

George Barr said...

Olivier:

too late for this image. I have done so for other images in the past and can see if I can recreate this image while saving the progress.

George