Monochrome Processing

[wrench]

Hi everyone. It's been awhile since I've posted here. I love photography, but sometimes other things take priority.

Anyways, I've been learning new post processing techniques in Gimp and would like your opinions.

First, here is the scene straight out of the camera:

IMG_0374 neutral by Big00Ern, on Flickr

I loved the tree highlighted against the sky. Here is my first attempt at monochrome with this image:

IMG_0374 by Big00Ern, on Flickr

I processed this image in DPP. I like the texture and contrast, but always thought the sky was boring. I think I added sepia as well. Fast forward 4 years and here is another attempt:

IMG_0374 neutral desaturate luminace by Big00Ern, on Flickr

This time I used Gimp. The processing was simply the desaturate with luminance selected. I think this image is a little brighter than the DPP version, but lacks contrast and the sky is still boring.

Here is another attempt:

IMG_0374 neutral-RGB red only by Big00Ern, on Flickr

This time I decomposed the original into RGB, but only used the red channel. The sky is still boring in my opinion, but I like the texture and brightness in the tree. I think maybe the rocks in the foreground are a little to bright.

Here is the final edit:

IMG_0374 neutral-RG by Big00Ern, on Flickr

This image was also processed using decompose to RGB, but blends the red and green channel together. The blue channel wasn't used. I created a burn layer consisting of neutral grey set to overlay mode to darken parts of the sky and the rock on the lower left of the image.

I gotta point out that I didn't think of doing all of this all on my own. I picked up this last method by watching the "Meet the Gimp" videos on Youtube.

I am looking forward to your feedback.

[Shadowman]

Nice original capture, the last three look like format from some old television shows. I like the look but as you've pointed out the sky is not being very friendly. You could add more detail in the sky but it looks like there is only so much and all to one side of the composition.

[bnnrcn]

The final edit looks best of the conversions Ernie.But I have to say that the color image is very nice too

[wrench]

Thanks Binnur and John for your feedback. The last edit is my favorite. For some reason, I've been hung up on B&W. I don't think I ever gave a second thought to the color image. Maybe I'll revisit that and see if there is something inspiring there.

There really isn't much detail in the sky. I was able to enhance the sky using a layer mask, but it hurt the image over all and left halos around the structure of the tree that were visible when viewing at 100%. The burn layer I mentioned earlier seemed to work the best.

[Geoff F]

The last 3 look OK to me; but the last one does have the best sky.

[IzzieK]

If you have the facility in Gimp to lower the highlights, you will find that you can extract a little bit more of the background sky...I do not use GIMP so I do not know...but I do know Photoshop and in ACR, I always lower the highlight button to find some good sky structure lurking behind. Kinda like "exposing for the sky" then you load both images and brush on the tree back. Just a thought.

[Wavelength]

Great original and nice conversions

[wrench]

I'll give that a try. I don't know if there is a highlight slider like in other photo editing software, but it does have a levels tool and a curves tool that I can probably achieve the same or similar result.

The Gimp is a great photo processing program for hobbyists like me because it's free to download and has a lot of the functionality of photoshop, as I understand it. But, there are so many different ways to process an image that I get lost in all of the different options. It just isn't very intuitive to use from my perspective (amateur with very limited experience in post processing). I'm getting better at it I think, but still a lot to learn.

[wrench]

Great original and nice conversions

Thanks!

[xpatUSA]

Hi everyone. It's been awhile since I've posted here. I love photography, but sometimes other things take priority.

Anyways, I've been learning new post processing techniques in Gimp and would like your opinions.

I gotta point out that I didn't think of doing all of this all on my own. I picked up this last method by watching the "Meet the Gimp" videos on Youtube.

I am looking forward to your feedback.

I too have little experience with the GIMP.

You might find these related links of interest about the general subject of grayscale conversion:

http://cadik.posvete.cz/color_to_gray_evaluation/

http://cadik.posvete.cz/color_to_gra...Evaluation.pdf

There he talks about methods and audience ratings but with many, many illustrative images.

If you haven't tried de-composing a color into L*a*b* and using the L* lightness layer, that often works better for me than simple de-saturation.

Another trick I've used to get more contrast is to export a raw file from something like RawDigger with gamma = 1 instead of 2.2 which rewards you with lots of highlight contrast (of course). Or that command-line program 'dcraw' where you can convert with any gamma you like

As to your images, some might say that the trees could be a tad darker but with more local contrast compared to the light sky and foreground rocks - to get the classic "stark" look.

GIMP roolz OK . . .

[mknittle]

It is a nice image Ernie, I like the last one best.
It would be nice to have more contrast in the clouds but I don't think those clouds lend themselves to that.

[wrench]

It is a nice image Ernie, I like the last one best.
It would be nice to have more contrast in the clouds but I don't think those clouds lend themselves to that.

Increasing contrast in the clouds has been one of my goals all along for this pic, but it seems that everything I have done up to this point to really bring out the detail of the clouds as either made the whole image to dark or leave artifacts (halos) in the image.

[wrench]

I too have little experience with the GIMP.

You might find these related links of interest about the general subject of grayscale conversion:

http://cadik.posvete.cz/color_to_gray_evaluation/

http://cadik.posvete.cz/color_to_gra...Evaluation.pdf

There he talks about methods and audience ratings but with many, many illustrative images.

If you haven't tried de-composing a color into L*a*b* and using the L* lightness layer, that often works better for me than simple de-saturation.

Another trick I've used to get more contrast is to export a raw file from something like RawDigger with gamma = 1 instead of 2.2 which rewards you with lots of highlight contrast (of course). Or that command-line program 'dcraw' where you can convert with any gamma you like

As to your images, some might say that the trees could be a tad darker but with more local contrast compared to the light sky and foreground rocks - to get the classic "stark" look.

GIMP roolz OK . . .

Thanks for the info! It will take me some time to really understand all of the info in the links.

I've never used any other RAW converter other than DPP. I will check out the ones you mentioned.

I did try LAB with this image, but didn't use it. I can't remember why now. I will have another look. I did have the tree a little darker and thought it looked nice when viewing the image as a whole, but I liked the tree a little brighter when viewing at 100%. You are right though. The whole image is more important than one single part. Just another example of how I get myself sidetracked while editing a photo.