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Description
Today I was wondering what the optimal method for producing black and white photos using digital methods was. I expected to read about using colour filters to increase contrast or something, but it turns out the best method is just to use a channel mixer which can effectively filter the contribution of each colour channel to the final monochromatic B+W image. I found this quite easy and fun to play with as well.

In this shot I had a very yellow flower as the subject so I used the channel mixer to brighten the greens and reds and dulled the blues to bring out the flower, then I applied a gradient map to apply the pink/purple colouring on the (then) monocrhomatic image.

I also used some highlitghts/shadows to bring out the texture in the petals and an unsharp mask with a size of 45 pixels to improve the local contrast.

I think the worst thing about this photo is that the flower lies about halfway down the photo which gives an unnatural look, I will have to improve the composition in the future but I am happy with the colouring effect.

Description
Today I was wondering what the optimal method for producing black and white photos using digital methods was. I expected to read about using colour filters to increase contrast or something, but it turns out the best method is just to use a channel mixer which can effectively filter the contribution of each colour channel to the final monochromatic B+W image. I found this quite easy and fun to play with as well.

In this shot I had a very yellow flower as the subject so I used the channel mixer to brighten the greens and reds and dulled the blues to bring out the flower, then I applied a gradient map to apply the pink/purple colouring on the (then) monocrhomatic image.

I also used some highlitghts/shadows to bring out the texture in the petals and an unsharp mask with a size of 45 pixels to improve the local contrast.

I think the worst thing about this photo is that the flower lies about halfway down the photo which gives an unnatural look, I will have to improve the composition in the future but I am happy with the colouring effect.