Black & White Conversion- A Comparison of 2 Techniques.

[Doc William]

I am lucky enough to call the Presidio of San Francisco my backyard. If you subscribed to the Epson Online Academy, it's the area that Vincent Versace was shooting.
While walking my dog this morning, I took this shot and decided to use it as a comparison of Black and White Conversion. The photo was taken with the RD-1 with a Leica 50/1.4 ASPH lens. I set the WB on the camera to Cloudy but switched it to Shady once I was in the Epson PhotoRaw Plug-in (I am a Mac user).
Shot #1 is the original, #2 is B&W conversion using PhotoRaw, and #3 was the RGB conversion in Photoshop using what is termed the "Gregg Gorman Technique", (although I understand that it is one of his assistants that actually came up with the technique).
Looking forward to your comments.
Cheers,
bill

[dphotoguy]

can you let us in on gorman's technique? cause i like it better than the PhotoRaw version.

[Doc William]

can you let us in on gorman's technique? cause i like it better than the PhotoRaw version.

Hey Danny,

Go to Greg's site: http://www.gormanphotography.com/gorman.html
Go to the "Navigate" bar and hit "Learn". It's a PDF under November 2004.

Insider note: I have a quicktime movie from the "Epson Print Academy " that shows him converting that exact image of Halle Berry. At the part where you select a color from the color swatches he selected a neutral grey (2nd row, 9th from the right), which I did. If you want a more platinum look go into the green swatches (but you will have to reduce opacity a bit).

He does add a levels adjustment layer (you can work in curves as well) and doesn't tweak the highlight or shadow sliders much, but he does play with the midtone slider quite a bit. Remember you can always tweak the opacity of that particular layer.

In defense of the Epson PhotoRaw, after getting the image into Photoshop, you can add a curves or levels adjustment layer and probably tweak it close to Gorman's.

BTW: Went to your website. I like your work.

Cheers,
bill