3 SIMPLE STEPS to create better BLACK AND WHITE CONVERSIONS in Capture One 20

hi everyone this is kasmokwa welcome to my channel where you will find photo editing training and educational videos to help you grow as an artist and photographer in this video i address john's question if i took this rocky landscape in which we have already created very strong color contrast we have enhanced this image how much more editing would it take to convert it to black and white so i'm going to break down for you my black and white conversion workflow into three simple steps i will show you how i created this monochromatic version of the color image and extra hint for you here sometimes taking time is actually a shortcut okay let's jump right into it okay so let's take a look and the color version of this image so we've been working on color contrast for this image in one of the previous videos the link is available in the description so jones requested to go one step further and after creating this final artwork he was curious how much longer it would take to create a black and white representation of the image do you remember the quote that i have mentioned in the intro to this video the quote from haruki murakami sometimes taking time is actually a shortcut so the quote perfectly applies to this image so let's take a look so if we just take a quick look at our layers basically the simplest idea would be to convert the image to black and white you can do this with one simple trick all you need to do is to just new field adjustment layer you can do this on one of the existing layers but i want to be tidy and organized here so we know what we are doing so on this separate layer i'm just going to jump over to the exposure top we have our layer here and i'm just going to push saturation slider all the way to the left so that way i have desaturated the image but if you look carefully you will still see color in the image so before the saturating this was our color version here we have been working a lot on enhancing contrast on enhancing luma contrast tonal contrast and then we focused on adding very strong color contrast here to create separation between the plants but now if i desaturate the image we have a removed color we have monochromatic representation of the image but the image is not black and white and we can check this very very quickly if i take a look at the color readouts so here for the sky we have one five six for the red one five one for the green and one eighty for the blue so this indicates that we have very strong bluish purplish color cast here and this color cast is present over the whole image if i move over and if i take the color readouts here we have a lot of red we have 82 for the red 74 for the green and 75 for the blue okay but you might say why not to convert the image instead of using this very simple trick instead of desaturating it why not to just convert the image to black and white let's do this let's try so this is the another shortcut that i would say in case of this image is actually pushing us into running loops so to convert your color image to black and white you need to be on the background layer in fact i should say you can be on any layer you wish but the conversion will always take place on background layer you cannot convert your image on extra layer this is always taking place in the background layer so being here let's quickly jump over to the color tab let's scroll all the way down and here we have our black and white tool so if i just click this little button here i have switched on the black and white tool and i have applied black and white conversion but the result is very similar again i have created monochromatic version of the image but we have encountered exactly the same problem here as with the saturation because the image is monochromatic but it's not black and white let's quickly check color redoubts so for the sky the same situation 138 for the red 138 for the green and 171 for the blue so we've been working on creating depth in this image we have been working on creating color contrast on creating separation between particular plants in the image so the foreground is very strongly warmer than the rest of the rocks and the rest of the plants it is much warmer we can check color readouts so then we have the middle plan we have that rock here and this is sort of between those yellowy brownish earthy colors and the blue rock that is visible here in the third plan plus we have this upper left triangle when we have those heels visible in far distance so that way we've been working with color to create these three plans and in this way we have added a lot of depth to this image we've been able to create three-dimensional effect we've been able to enhance three-dimensional effect but if i just turn the image to black and white this is simply gone in black and white all that matters is tonal contrast is contrast between bright tones middle tones and dark tones so when the color is gone when we have removed the color we still have the artifacts and by this i mean that by manipulating with color by manipulating with tones in the image to create this very strong color contrast let's just quickly compare by looking at the original not edited version of the image so this is the original raw file and by very strongly working with contrast and working with color we have actually shifted tones in this image so the tonal values here would be different in comparison with tonal values in this color image so the reason for this is that if we again switch our black and white conversion we have manipulated with the tones so our whites grays and blacks are no longer the same we have shifted them after working on color plus we have this i would say unwanted color cast because we've been working with color balance if for your color grading you would work only with color editor after converting your image in black and white it would be black and white but if you were using color balance this will always give you a color cast this can be of course used to enhance your images but you should do this consciously and you should be aware of this and once you know this you can use it to your advantage so if we just quickly jump over to color balance we can see here that i have manipulated with colors in color balance tool the same on this layer contrast and color so getting back to our quote we can say that to create a proper black and white conversion and to take full advantage of the information that was present in not edited raw image we would be better off if we just start with the original not edited file it might actually look like a lot of work but let me show you my black and white conversion process let me break it down for you into three simple steps so i'm going to show you how we can take this original raw file and how we can move towards this result let's just go for the final image so here you might say that we still have a bit of color things yes that's true i have added a bit of color as the very last layer but if i switch it off so now the tint is gone we have black and white representation of the image so if i take a color readout we have always the same numeric values for all the colors so that way we can check if the image is black and white and let's take a quick look at these two images one beside the other so i don't know if you agree with me but my impression is that the black and white conversion here the effect is way more three-dimensional is way more spacious so here we have been focusing on color contrast and that's true that if we switch off our automatic black and white conversion we have a lot of depth we have the beautiful color but the simple way of just switching the black and white tool doesn't work okay so let's jump right into this image and let's do our black and white conversion step by step so first of all i'm going to just clone this variant so that way i have one more image and i'm going to reset all these adjustments so we will be able to start with unedited raw file i'm going to hide my browser so that way we have way more space to work with let's start with the exposure tab so the very first step is going to be actually in the color tab because the very first step that you want to take so this is the first of my three steps of the black and white conversion process the very first step will be always turning your image to black and white there is no point of adjusting contrast there is no point of adjusting anything because after the black and white conversion all the tones are shifting all the tones are changing and this will require further fine tuning so remember first step always move over to your color tab and in the black and white tool simply enable black and white so this gives us the automatic black and white conversion if we quickly compare it with the final result you can see how far it is from the final effect so we will now focus on creating depth in the image we will focus on luminosity adjustments so this will be the second step the first one converting the image to black and white the second we will be working on creating three dimensionality we will be working on creating separation between these three plans after removing color the image is quite flat we have more dark tones in the foreground therefore the foreground is way darker because we have the aerial perspective so this means that the more air is between us and the rocky formation between us and the plan the brighter the plan will be so the best example is to just quickly take a look at those hills visible here they are really far the distance is huge between the camera and those hills so that's why they appear way brighter so we are going to use this rule of aerial perspective and in the black and white representation of the image we'll be building our plans that way we will be working on creating stronger contrast between the third plan and the first plan we are going to make the first plant darker the middle plan is going to be contrasty but the third plan is going to be way brighter so that way we will be able to add more depth to the image so let's just get rid of this one and let's focus on our starting point so once we have enabled the black and white tool we have a chance here to work with these sliders and that way we will be able to fine-tune how particular colors that were present in the image translating into tonal values so if you've been ever working with black and white adjustment layer in photoshop on in similar tool in lightroom you should be familiar with this this is very easy very intuitive in case of this image we didn't have much color but it will give us some results and actually before we start manipulating with these sliders i'm going to enhance contrast this is very very important step so let's quickly jump over to the exposure top and we are going to apply auto levels adjustment this is what i always recommend when you start working on any image so simply before we do this we can take a look at our histogram so what we want in most of our edits and especially what we want to put the emphasis on in black and white image we want to have all the data stretched across the whole graph we want all the data to be stretched across the whole histogram because now we have gaps here so here the peak visible in the middle simply represents mid tones we have plenty of midtones in the image and we have a bit of bright tones but we are missing strong highlights and we are missing dark tones so by creating contrast i'm going to stretch the histogram i'm going to simply add dark tones and i'm going to add highlights so you can do this super quick just with the levels tool all you need to do is to just click on the second icon so that way you are applying auto levels capture one is automatically creating the the adjustment so you can see that those points have moved those sliders were adjusted so again this is before this is the after keep your eye on the histogram and see how this changes after applying auto level so now we still have the gap in the blocks we have gap in the highlights but after applying the old adjustment the histogram got stretched now the information is filling the whole graph and the image has changed as well so this gave us perfect starting point and we are going to jump back and fine tune how our particular colors translate into tones and before we do just that i'm just going to very quickly touch highlights on the high dynamic range tool to recover a bit of details that were lost here in this upper left very bright corner so i'm just going to push the slider towards the left and that way i'm darkening the sky slightly so the corner is a bit more harmonious with rest of the image before it was sort of divided the division the contrast was very strong between the rock and the sky so i'm not going to go very far just to darken the corner a bit okay so now we can jump over to our color tab and we can focus on our black and white tool so here by manipulating with these particular sliders we can change how the colors look after translating to black and white so if we push the red slider towards the right we are brightening the reds if we go towards the left we are darkening the left so now we have to be careful and we need to judge visually if this is benefiting our image or not so as i've mentioned at the very beginning when i was sort of setting the game plan for this black and white conversion we want to be working on enhancing depth on creating stronger separation between the plants so if i would make my reds darker this is making the image flatter so if i go in the opposite direction i'm adding more depth the first plan the foreground is getting way more three dimensional so i'm just going to go for stronger value here we can always take a quick preview so if i hit y this will show me original image and i can see now what sort of colors are present here this is a bit helpful when we'll be touching this slider so we can see that we have no green here we have just a bit of this small plants here so that will be our green so this means that if we will be manipulating with the green slider this is not going to give us a lot of result so we can maybe darken it slightly but the green is simply not present in the image so let's go for the yellow slider we have plenty of earthy colors here this is going to give us strong effect so similarly to red if i push it towards the left i'm darkening all the yellows so the yellow the original translation looked like that but if i push yellow slider to the left i'm darkening the tones that consist yellow and if i go to the right i'm brightening them so i like the brightening effect so this gives me again more three dimensionality i'm enhancing the highlights and i'm creating stronger tonal contrast between those dark parts and those that are lit so maybe 100 is a bit too much let's go for 80 82 something like that so we've already touched the greens let's go for science i don't think this will give us a lot of difference actually yes it does so what it does is it is brightening the third plan and this is what we are after in this edit so i'm going to leave it somewhere around here remember that in capture one you are working of course in a non-destructive way so you can always get back to this tool and fine-tune these values if you feel that it can help the image further so in when it comes to the blues i'm going to of course push it to the right because i want to create stronger distinction between the middle plan and the third plan so you can see that by just manipulating with the blues i have made the aerial perspective way way stronger so we have way more depth in the image if i just switch off the blue slider adjustment and this enhances the aerial perspective so we are making all the plants brighter but in comparison with the third plant the first one is not changing that strongly but we are getting the very beautiful depth so i'm going to leave it as it is and when it comes to the magenta let's see this is brightening the image a little bit and that way we are darkening it so i'm just going to go for positive value let's say value around here works well okay so let's proceed our black and white conversion further we have performed the first step which was simply switching on the black and white conversion that is gave us the auto effect now we are working on the second step so we are working on polishing luminosities in our image so in black and white photography this is crucial what we are left are tones what we are left are darks mid-tones and highlights and the the success of your final result will entirely depend on the contrast that you have in your image on distinctions that you who have created so if we check the histogram you can see that we are already shifting our values here okay so so far we've been working on the background layer let's now add another adjustment layer and on this layer we will be working with luminosity adjustments we will be fine-tuning it and we will be working with my favorite tools with curves so here we are just going to add curve so let's move over to our exposure top here is my curve i'm just going to pull it out and enlarge it making the tool bigger will simply allow you greater precision which is crucial here okay so it's snapped to this one let's just make it bigger okay so here i'm just going to be working on luma curve y on luma simply because we are not working with color so rgb is not relevant here here i'm going to use one of the ready presets so i'm going to just go for contrast luma let's check so this gives you immediately the preview of your effect let's check mid tones brighter no this is flattening the image mid tones darker no again this is darkening very strongly the third plan and shadow is brighter this is definitely no so i'm going to go for the contrast luma so once i have applied this adjustment we can judge the results so first of all okay we need to make it slightly smaller i want you to see what i'm doing here so first of all applying the luma curve created strong tonal contrast so i'm super happy with the result we are halfway through our black and white conversion so this is before this is the after but i just want to still recover those details here i'm just going to quickly jump to the hdr tool and push again highlights towards the left so that way our left upper corner is a bit more linked with the rest of the image we don't want it to stand out super strongly and sort of create a hole in the composition okay so let's now fine tune our curve so let's see if i just go with this point a little bit more towards the top i will be brightening all the bright mid tones and going stronger with the highlights so this can be a bit too much let's go for something like this and let's go our darker mid tones still a little bit darker so that way i will be enhancing contrast so i want to go for quite a dark tones in the foreground that way i'm adding depth and at this point i can quickly jump back to my background layer and check if now capture one will give me better result with auto adjustment so let's hit this icon again so you can see that it actually pushed those sliders stronger towards the middle this created very very strong contrast i'm not sure if i want to go that far but actually okay let's just push back slightly the highlights and maybe let's make the mid tones a notch darker okay i think something like this works really really well so we have applied the curve we have touched again the levels out adjustment on this layer you could work with levels again but if you want to use the auto levels this can be done only on the background layer on this one this icon is simply not active okay so we have added the curve adjustment let's now take a look at the image and let's see what else we can do to further fine tune luminosity levels how to further work on composition so i would say that i would like to apply a sort of vignette so this will close the composition so now i have the row that starts here we are going inside here this dark rock is sort of dividing the image so let me switch on the annotation so here we have the road that is taken our viewer inside pulling the eye inside but here we have this darker area here that is actually breaking the road so the the road continues here behind the rock and it goes all the way here so i will work on making this part brighter so this diagonal line will have continuation here and i will add a custom vignette so that way i will apply it on the sides of the image so i'm going to make sides of the image darker so that way i will sort of close the composition and i will try to keep viewers eye on the middle on the center part i will force the eye to follow the road to follow the path without being distracted by those lines that are created by the shapes of this rocky formations okay so let's get back to work so first we are going to apply bigger adjustment i'm going to add custom vignette and then i will work on brightening the center so let's add the first layer and by the way if you're getting value from this video if you're getting value from my other videos i will really appreciate if you hit the like button if you subscribe to this channel so that way i will be able to record in the future to make more free videos for you so let's focus on creating our custom vignette to do this i'm just going to use the radial gradient and i'm going to make it quite large so i don't want to darken the sky i want to darken sides of the image and i want to make the transition very very soft so if i hit m this gives me preview of the mask actually no i need to invert this so let's right click and let's switch this off and let's draw our vignette again okay so now this is perfect it's a little bit too large so i want to darken sides of the image without darkening the top that much i want to darken those rocks here and the top right upper corner just to close the composition so now i'm adjusting the mask i want to try to darken the upper left corner as well so this is preview of my mask let's switch it off and now on our vignette layer let's quickly move over to the exposure and i'm going to apply negative value here to simply create darker effects to darken the image in the place where the mask was applied and that way i'm very nicely closing the composition so let's quickly check this is before this is the after we can reposition it so having still our radial gradient icon selected we can move it around and we can see how this works so i would say i'm going too far because as a very next step i will be brightening this part of the image okay so i'm very happy with the effect the only adjustment here will be to quickly jump over to hdr and i want to see if opening the shadows a little bit will help because i went for really dark shadows in the foreground let's check if we are crushing blocks with the exposure warning we are a little bit so this is bothering me a bit so i'm just going to open it up okay let's switch it on and let's touch the shadow slider okay so this is fixing the issue i'm not going to brighten them that strongly i i'm happy with rich blacks a little bit of rich blacks in the foreground but without touching the shadows either it was a little bit too much so this was before fixing this with the hdr tool and after okay so we have added our vignette which very beautifully closes the composition on both sides we can actually increase this value here let's just select the numeric value and work with the arrows on my keyboard so now it's calculating now this is way too much let's go for something around negative 55. okay this is perfect let's now okay let's push shadows a little bit further to the right now it's way better okay let's now add one more adjustment layer so we are all the time working on the step number two of my black and white conversion workflow we are fine tuning luminosity so here let's just rename this layer to center and i'm just going to apply maybe i can no let's again use the radial gradient this is the fastest way and we can always rasterize it and fine tune if we want to i just wanted to brighten this part of the rock so we will have continuation of the road now it's simply broken by this darker area so here let's try to open up shadows we don't want to create anything artificial we want everything to look harmonious okay we are creating the mask on the outside so again let's draw inside and let's draw one more so now this is perfect let's rotate it and let's just fine tune it so it applies in the proper place let's switch off the preview of our mask and let's just reset this value let's apply this again so this is opening up the shadows and brightening the image here so now i'm just going to fine tune my mask so to do this let's just select e for eraser and let's just go for quite high hardness maybe around 60 flow and let's just get rid of the mask from the foreground so that way we will be brightening the middle plan without brightening the foreground so let's switch off the preview of our mask and let's see this is before this is the after so as you can see the black and white conversion is built layer after layer so the time that you will spend on it depends on you so i would say that at this point i'm super happy with the fact i might stop here so we are almost done i'm going to just create a few more little steps to polish it out to show you what can be done but i would say at this point i'm super happy with the black and white conversion so what i would do next maybe we can still brighten the third plan and maybe we can make at the same time some highlights a bit stronger so let's do just that let's create new field adjustment layer and let's rename it let's call it light third plan and here we will be working with the luma mask so let's hit on the luma range and we are going to select the value that will cover the upper left corner and this part of the rock in the third plan so i want to make this part brighter this will create stronger tonal contrast between the darker part of the rocks and that part that is visible here i want to create stronger separation this is the words that you should remember when you're working on black and white separation tonal separation so let's switch on this play mask so we'll see what is selected where is our mask okay so let's go for something like this and let's make sure that this part of the rock is covered so maybe let's go a little bit further let's include more of the mid tones now we are starting to lose the separation here so let's just push it back and we can fine tune this point let's push it backwards okay i would say that this is going to work so let's hit apply so i'm going to open up those mid-tones with curve so i'm in my layer luma curve let's add control point and let's uncore the curve so it won't be brightening the brightest highlights that strongly i just want to open up mid tones i want to push them towards brighter tones so that way i've managed to create way stronger distinction between the tones in the third plan and i have brightened this part of the rock as well which creates even stronger tonal contrast stronger depth the only problem i can see here that before applying this adjustment i liked way more the tones here they were way more subtle after pushing those bright mid-tones further we are flattening this part and it almost looks like snow so i'm just going to quickly fix it so if i rasterize the mask so let's just remove the mask from this area so let's go for the eraser again let's increase size of our tool and let's very quickly brush over these areas where we don't want to have the brightening visible so especially here from the road the road was already strong and there is no need to push it further so we have been getting the result on the third plan on the rocks but we are maintaining the tonal value on the middle plan and on the foreground that we have been already happy with okay so we have fancy on the mask and now the image is getting really into shape it's looking really really good okay so so far we've performed the two first steps we have created the black and white conversion on our background layer here with the black and white tool the second step is always the most time consuming so you are working on luminosity adjustments you are building depth in your image you are building the effect layer after layer and the third step this is just final adjustments adding some texture adding maybe some clarity so we are already closing the black and white conversion the effect that we have created it looks really really good and just now we can take a look at the image at 100 percent magnification level so as you can see the image contains plenty of detail and when you are working on applying either sharpening or texture or clarity always take a look at 100 because you want to make sure that it looks good that you are not overdoing this so when it comes to this image it consists those beautiful rock formations and i feel that it can benefit from some additional sharpness from some additional texture so let's just rename it and let's call it clarity and let's add a little bit of clarity here in our exposure tab so clarity method natural and let's just push clarity slider a bit towards the right so this is adding contrast to the mid tones and let's go for a bit of structure as well okay we need to zoom out to see what is going on because the screen is not large enough this is a raw fire from the fujifilm xt2 and the image is quite large so this is before applying clarity and this is after the raw files from fujifilm are very sharp so i don't feel that there is any need to add additional sharpness to the image i feel that the clarity and adding a bit of texture is more than enough the very last touch that i might add here would be color grading adding a bit of tint to the image but i'm going to do this in a bit different way you can do this simply by moving to your black and white tool and you can go for split tones so here you can add a hue to highlights and to shadows separately but i'm going to add new field adjustment layer i'm going to rename it and call it tint and i'm going to apply a tint in a bit i would say more creative way so this will enhance this sort of vintage look to this image the image to me has this really classy vintage look so this sort of reminds me of a light lick so let's just experiment a bit here so i'm going to use my linear gradient tool i'm going to create a linear gradient going sort of this way so if i hit m this gives me the preview of my mask so i'm going to add a tint to this image with the tool that from the beginning sort of complicated our process i'm going to be using color balance okay so let's adjust the gradient a bit we don't want to have half of the image black and white and half of the image with a color tint so i'm going to cover most of the image but to have the effect applied sort of gradually okay so this is my mask let's hit m to get rid of the preview of the mask so i'm going to experiment a bit here when it comes to the shadows let's try maybe let's take a quick preview of the original aero file and we are still building depth in the image so at the beginning i have mentioned that the foreground is way warmer we have earthy tones here and the depth here is created by contrast between the blues in the background and warm tones browns in the foreground so let's not lose it let's actually reuse it in our black and white conversion so we can still relate to it and i would like to add maybe some quite warm tone so definitely the image was taken in oman i have photographed the canyon in oman and this is not the himalayas i wouldn't definitely go for blue tones here this was very hot day the temperatures over there are really really high so let's just try to recreate the atmosphere so i'm going to go for warm tone for the shadows let's add a bit of this reddish magenta stone so this creates this beautiful effect let's see this is before this is the after so this is going a bit too much towards a sepia effect so let's quickly jump over to mid tones and here let's experiment let's see if i add more red no this is creating very artificial effect something like this i believe works so i'm going to add blue to the mid tones okay so that's the way we are enhancing the aerial perspective the image still has i would say natural feel to it but with the enhancement of color we have added this very very final touch to the image we can still reposition the gradient if you want to do so so if you feel that there is too much of the area that is not covered with the color grading we can readjust the gradient so this is our final result where we have other things to the image and this is the one step before black and white conversion without adding any color so in this video we have taken the image that we've been working on in previous videos we have analyzed this and we have decided that to create black and white representation of the image it is simply way easier and way more efficient to start with the original version so we have dropped entirely this image and we have started with original raw file so i have taken you through three steps of my black and white conversion process the first step was to create the black and white conversion with the black and white tool in capture one the second step was all about creating depth in the image with luminosity adjustments by increasing contrast between dark tones bright tones and working on harmonizing composition and the very last third step this is just final touches which are important because when it comes to black and white texture is super super important and especially when you have texture in your image as in case of this photo that would be a shame just not to take advantage of this and not to play it out so we have added a bit of texture and we have added tint and that way we have created the black and white conversion of the color image so thank you very much for watching this was kasia's mokwa from digital art classes and i will see you in the next video

Channel: Kasia Zmokla

Views: 1,638

Keywords: digital photography, Kasia Zmokla, capture one tutorial, capture one 20, capture one 20 tutorials, capture one pro 20, capture one pro, capture one workflow, editing black and white capture one, capture one 20 black and white, capture one black and white conversion, capture one pro 20 black and white, capture one black and white with color, black and white conversion techniques, black and white conversion capture one, black and white photo conversion, landscape photography, b&w

Id: oe2dWUZIIZE

Length: 47min 14sec (2834 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2020