Old Church - need helf form BW experts

[MilT0s]

I captured this Medieval time church in Palaiochora (Old-Town) in Aegina island having BW in my mind in the first place. Playing with the slides in Lightroom I loved the dark dramatic sky version. I would like to ask people with BW experience in here to evaluate my conversion. I am most concern about the halo around the building (or is it just imagination??). Anyway I like this image a lot and I want to accomplish the best possible BW conversion.




(Arggg... why I always make spelling errors in the thread title which I cannot change??? more help needed mods!)

[redrew]

Miltos, very well done far as I am concerned, the dark sky enhances the stone building.

[Donald]

I think this is a very impressive B & W conversion.

You ask about the halo. Do you mean the section I have encircled?

This is the only area that I can see that could possible be interpreted as a halo. But I do not think it is.

Instead, I think it is a feature of the stonework of the building. I think that a repair may have been done to that corner and what we see is the new material that was put on top of the stonework.

The darkened sky works very well. One possibility would have have been to keep the clouds lighter in tone and only darken the clear areas of the sky by so much.

[MilT0s]

Rollin and Donald thank you very much for your comments.

Donald my concern is if due to the overprocess of the image the "transition" between the building and the dark sky looks not so "natural", probably not a halo but a "strange" edge. I will certainly come back with a new version tomorrow.

[Mike Buckley]

Nothing looks unusual or unappealing to me about where the sky joins the building.

My guess is that the part that Donald circled is a wire, perhaps leading to a lightning rod that cannot be seen at this angle.

Looking forward to the next version!

[Polar01]

Miitos: I think it is because the building against the black of the sky would appear very sharp, I suggest going back in and reworking the blue in the sky so it is not as deep a black, this would lessen the contrast between the sky and the building.
It may help it is what I would try.

Cheers:

Allan

[John Morton]

Hi, Miltos;

Yes I see what you mean about the edge of the building but I am not exactly sure what this would be.

My first thought was that it might be some sort of selection artifact, where the sky and the building where processed/edited differently. Then I thought it might be a sharpening artifact, where dark edges are given a light border and light edges are given a dark border to make them stand out more.

I think what I ended up settling upon is that it is a contrast issue: the brightest parts of the building are brighter than what should be white clouds in the sky; and the darkest parts of the sky are darker than the areas under the eaves of the building. So, I think that maybe this is what your eye (and mine) is taking issue with. Now, if you were to use a polarizing filter on black and white film then you could darken the sky to a considerable degree BUT the clouds would seem all the whiter for it.

There is something else I am noticing that is a little strange and I have no explanation for it: if you cover the top part so that no sky is showing, the tonality of the photo looks fine. If you cover the bottom part so that only the building and the sky are showing, again the tonality of the photo looks fine. So the visual tension seems to be between the foreground in front of the building at the bottom of the photo, and the sky.

I don't know why this is... maybe, because the lights and darks of the rocks are in the same tonality range as the lights and darks of the sky?

Well I'm not sure what is causing the visual reaction you note but I think it is a great image and certainly worth playing around with to see what will make it pull together.

[Radu Dinu Cordeanu]

1.unsharp mask 6 px. amount 100
2.unsharp mask 3 px. amount 100
3 high pass filter 6px

All these over processes give what you define as halo.You must see which is well for you.You must know the decrease of the contrast decreases the halo

[MilT0s]

Allan, John, Radu thank you for your comments.

After careful examing the high res original image, as well other captures of the building, I found that this "halo" type thing is not something man made (wire, part of the wall etc) but a sharpening/contrast issue. Here is a close up which has been oversized:



You can clearly see the Mach bands Radu mentioned, i.e. a lighter/darker "lines" combination at the edge as a result of the sharpening process. The image has not been oversharpened though, it is the exagerrated darkening of the blue channel that give rise to it. In this version there is not any selectively processing, the whole image has been processed as one.

John the "visual tension", the "strange" combination of the darker/upper and lighter/lower part is actually the effect I want to achieve that make the building pop from the image, I know it doesn't look totally "normal" but I find interesting. The transition is I don't like. I think the original color image is boring.

(I really love the term "visual tension"!!)

You also mentioned something else very interesting. What is usually written in books is that in the digital era you can simulate any filtering effect you want during the BW conversion of the original image. I believe however that I would have obtained a better result if I had used a deep red filter during capturing. Unfortunately I have never used a color filter with film (or without) to see myself. That would be a very interesting discussion if someone have experience on that. As for the polarizing filter I ofter read that polarizer is something extremely difficult to simulate in post processing. I really should have used one in this case.

Thanks again all of you, there is a ton of thing to learn.

[MilT0s]

Here is another one:



What I did here to lessen the ungly transition is to selectively blur the edge of the building as an anti-sharpening process (obviously I cannot use the term unsharp...). I chose a 3 pixel brush in the jpg for that.

I also made the cloud brighter and selectively sharpened the stones.

Tell me what you think!

[Mike Buckley]

I like this image much better, mostly because of your treatment of the building and everything in the foreground. You didn't mention what you did to that area of the image, but it has more contrast, mostly because the dark parts seem to be darker now.

[Nicola]

Hi Miltos,
I do like very much this picture, and the last version is my preferred.
first of all I want say that i'm viewing these images in a very low quality monitor a the office, so my eye could makes mistakes.
In the first version, I see a bit "un-natural" also the transition between the roof of the little tower on the curchand the black sky. I do not see Halo there, what seems unnatural to my eyes is the contour of the roof: it has too "soft and smooth lines" for a so raw surface. sometimes it comes from some cloning procedure.
in the last image this is less visible as the contrast is lowered, but still a bit present.
i repeat again anyway, that i'm actually not sure of what I'm seeing on this poor monitor....
ciao

nicola

[kdoc856]

Miltos,

Very interesting thread. I also thought the Mach lines were structural intially, and my only suggestion was going to be a allow some more highlights in the clouds to make a sky a touch more contrast. But you have now fixed both, to my edification and visual delight. I love this image.

Kevin

[MilT0s]

I like this image much better, mostly because of your treatment of the building and everything in the foreground. You didn't mention what you did to that area of the image, but it has more contrast, mostly because the dark parts seem to be darker now.

Mike I have used the "Freaky details" technique found on the net.

Links: here here here and here

[MilT0s]

Mike, Nicola, Kevin thank you for your comments (Mike I forgot to thank you in my previous post sorry!).

I guess that since I want a un-natural sky (it is overprocessed afterall) I will have to do with a bit of un-natural look of the building as well until hopefully someone has another idea of what can be done.

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks for the links to the "freaky details," Miltos. I look forward to reviewing them.

[John Morton]

I guess that since I want a un-natural sky (it is overprocessed afterall) I will have to do with a bit of un-natural look of the building as well until hopefully someone has another idea of what can be done.

Well just a suggestion but, if you did select out the sky and apply a slight gradient filter so that it was darkest a the top and shifted into being just a bit lighter toward the bottom, that might help make the sky 'more naturally un-natural'; and I think it would also emphasize the extreme upward angle the building is being viewed at, too.