A Seascape

[Saorsa]

Processing mono came up in the silvery sea thread so I thought I would present one of my own and discuss what I did with it. The original color image was processed with Nikon Capture NX-2 and the photo was taken with a Nikon P7100 point and shoot.

Here is the original color image.


I then used FastStone to convert it to greyscale


That seemed a bit flat so I reduced brightness, used the shadow slider and increased contrast to make it crisper.

[Kyle]

Wow, great shots! I like the colour one best but your edits to the greyscale one make it look fantastic too!

[Wavelength]

Excellent; i like the original and conversion equally

[flashback]

Brian,
It's a great image. And while I am a proponent of B&W, in my opinion this just looks so much better in color. The froth and foam in the lower RHS isn't as evident and the splashes of orange light on the water disappears in the B&W. You did a good conversion, I just think this is an image made for color.

[tbob]

Just have to add my echo of Jack's observations. If you can preserve the light foam and light path on the water it would improve the conversion. But this is better in colour

[Saorsa]

I agree that the color is better. My reason for posting this was to show the work needed after conversion. Simple conversion to greyscale is offered by most photo handling software. But in doing so, what works for color simply gets lost as the color goes and some work on the mono version needs to be done.

Of course, we have other options available to us other than simply removing color. Here are three more simple changes to the same image.

Supersaturated - makes the colors hard and garish. Just the thing for a Florida Highwayman effect.



or, we can reduce saturation until only a hint of the original color remains. It's like a wash on a monochrome print.



Unfortunately, while pleasing and calm it looks a bit washed out so a bit of contrast needs to be added.

[Brownbear]

Thank you for sharing... When you convert to black and white would you use the slider to increase the red/orange/blue tones (while in B&W) to bring out the same beautiful colours in your image?

[Saorsa]

Thank you for sharing... When you convert to black and white would you use the slider to increase the red/orange/blue tones (while in B&W) to bring out the same beautiful colours in your image?

In this case I just used the saturation slider. That keeps the RGB proportions the same. Using the colour sliders changes the proportions and makes it warmer or cooler. That creates yet another effect.

[bnnrcn]

Original colour image in the beginning is my best

[Brownbear]

Thank you.

In this case I just used the saturation slider. That keeps the RGB proportions the same. Using the colour sliders changes the proportions and makes it warmer or cooler. That creates yet another effect.

[IzzieK]

My vote for the original coloured one too.

[Saorsa]

In this case I just used the saturation slider. That keeps the RGB proportions the same. Using the colour sliders changes the proportions and makes it warmer or cooler. That creates yet another effect.

Here are the results of the red, green and blue sliders. Each increased by 25% in Faststone

Blue


Green


Red


This is a bit interesting because the sea is really a blue green color and the sky predominantly red. As a result, increasing the red affects only the sky while the green and blue both affect the sea.