Isca wrote:
> I've been a little disappointed with how Photoshop turns a colour
> photo into a b&w image. I've used a variety of actions, grayscale,
> desaturation, you name it, but I still don't seem to get the subtle
> tonality of film.

Gareth,

Have you tried my selective color b&w action? Theoretically, using selective color you could get any tone in the grayscale in such a set up. Unlike other B&W conversions where you are usually doing some 'global' or semi global adjustment as in channel mixing for example, selective color has 'target colors' of all the colors rgb, cmy, plus neutrals, whites and blacks AND within those target colors adjustment on cmy and black. While russel brown's two hue/sat adjustment layers give a wider variety than most, it doesn't address specifically the cmyk Within the rgb colors and his second hue/sat adjustment layer doesn't have the neutrals, whites and blacks that selective color has, which can be very 'active' in b&w, as you know.

The action, which is quite simply two adjustment layers - one hue/sat to desaturate and selective color to adjust tones can be done without the aciton, of course, also gives you a way to do tint tones by backing off the full desat on the hue/sat adjustment layer and moving the hue slider (brightness could also be adjusted, of course).

In the action set, I have two actions - one with the hue/sat and sel. color layers and one with a channel mixer adjustment layer and a sel. color adj. layer, for those who like channel mixer for desaturation. Unfortunately the settings on the channel mix which I used in that action is way off, but can be adjusted after by setting the channel mixer to different level - suggest r=100; g=0; b=0 to start. I'm going to change that in v. 1.1 :-)

The best way, imo, to use this method is to have the color image available to see what areas in the b&w that one wants to 'tone' - ie. if it is an area of green, for example, one can adjust the target color 'green' in selective color or 'yellow' sometimes gives you more 'action' on greens - also cyan will affect greens and of course the black sliders for lightness and darkness.

One caution is that extreme adjustment will sometime 'posterize' areas, but usually such extreme adjustments aren't needed to get a tone.

Action available (first action in 'image enhancements') at:
http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm

...or just add the adjustment layers from the layers menu, without the action.
--
Kent
http://www.pbase.com/kentc