hello i'm robin whalley welcome to lenscraft it's been a while since i've covered anything
in on1 photo so this week i'm using it to process a black and white image
recently i've been working on a series of misty photo images shot around the area i live and
i've been doing the black and white processing using on one photo so today i thought i'd share
an example using one of these images now although on1 photo as its own raw converter and browser
i'm going to be using it as a plugin from photoshop despite this the actual processing
and filters are just the same as in the full version of on1 i created the starting image
from a raw file using capture one and i have that image open now in photoshop the next step
is to duplicate the image to a new layer which i can then convert for use with smart filters
the reason i want to apply my own one photo processing as a smart filter
is that it retains all of my editing adjustments if i decide later that i want to change my
adjustments i just reopen the smart filter and make the changes with the layer converted to
use smart filters i can now launch on one photo effect from the photoshop filter menu
when on one photo launches it puts me in the effects tab but i can also switch to the other
tabs if i want to i'm now going to add a series of filters to create and then process the black and
white image the first of these is the black and white filter which makes the initial conversion
the filter is split into four sections which control different aspects of the black and white
conversion the top section is the colour response sliders although you can also switch this to a
channel mixer below this is the tone section where you can adjust the image tones we then
have a toner section where you can apply split toning colours to the image and finally there's
a film grain effect i'll start by adjusting the color response sliders which control how light
or dark a color becomes when converted to black and white when i move the slider to the right
it lightens that color and if i move it to the left it darkens the colour it can be helpful to
start by moving each of the colour sliders right and left to understand their effect on the image
from this i've worked out that i want to darken the reds which prevents the sheep
from becoming too light i'll then lighten the yellows and greens to make the grass lighter
finally i'll darken the blues to make the background of the
seed a little easier to see although i am going to lighten it again in a later step
next i want to add a film grain effect using one of the presets in the drop down list
i'll choose ilford hp5 400 which is a film i sometimes shoot with when i'm using a film camera
now i'm not going to use the tone section of this filter because i prefer to use a separate tone
enhancer filter it has a few more controls that i find useful when processing black and white photos
i want to use this filter to emphasize the detail in some of the sheep that are nearer to the camera
to make the tone adjustments i'll zoom in
on a group of sheep so that i'm not distracted by the rest of the image
i'll then use the tone sliders to ensure there's enough contrast and detail in each of the sheep
i'll also use the detail and clarity slider to emphasize the sheep's fleece
once i'm happy with how the sheep look i'm going to add a mask
to hide the effect from the entire scene
i can then use the brush tool set to paint in to apply the effect to the foreground shape
the next filter i want to add is one of my favorites in on one photo effect
which is the glow filter in the filter you have an amount slider which controls the
strength of the effect as well as a halo slider to control the spread of the glow
as well as these two controls you have a mode drop down which defaults to soft light when
you change the mode you create a different glow effect for example switching to the screen mode
also causes the image to become lighter whilst adding a glow if you're not sure which effect
to use hover your mouse over each mode in the list to preview the effect now one thing that
i don't like about the glow effect is when they make shadows or dark objects appear to
glow this causes a dark halo around the area that i find distracting and a little bit ugly
the way i'm going to control this problem is using a luminosity mask on the filter
the default luminosity mask is pretty much what i want because it restricts the glow from affecting
the darker areas but i can also control this further using the window slider by moving the
black and white sliders inwards i can restrict the glow further just to the mid tones in the image
one other filter worth mentioning here is the weather effect filter which tries to
simulate different weather conditions now i'm not ordinarily a fan of this type of filter but i find
it can be useful for enhancing existing weather conditions as this is a misti scene we could use
it to add more fogs to the image to show you what it's doing i can set the transition slider to zero
this creates a hard edge to the effect which we can then move up and down to position with the
distance slider the amount slider then controls the strength of the effect currently this doesn't
look very realistic so i'm going to remove the effect from the foreground shape to create more
depth in the image to do this i'll select the mask for the filter and then the brush tool
using a relatively hard brush edge i can paint out the effect from the sheet
having a hard edge to the brush helps with the accuracy
now i'm rushing this for the video but you can take your time and achieve a good
mask if after painting the mask i want to blend the adjustments a little bit more
i can reduce the mask density rather than trying to do more painting
now that's the black and white processing complete for the image and i can click the done button to
apply the adjustments and return to photoshop but the thing that i want to stress is that
applying a black and white conversion filter alone won't create a good photo this is true
of whatever software you're using and isn't something that applies only to on1 photo
the thing that will improve most black and white photos is the additional processing you apply
light the tone adjustment to bring out the detail or adding a glow effect these can help set an
image apart and make it more appealing i hope that you've enjoyed today's video i haven't published
many on1 videos in the past so if you'd like to see more please let me know in the comments below
i'm robin whalley you've been watching lenscraft i'll see you soon for another
video