articles/Monochrome/digitalmonochrome-page6

Digital Monochrome - part 6 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

by Paul Gallagher Published 01/02/2012

Fig 11 Once again, I turned my attention to the yellow and green sliders and used the previously enhanced colour information and enhanced it even more, but seeing the effect in monochrome. When happy with the effects I clicked 'okay'.

From this moment on I reverted to the way I always work, which is using lasso selections, with various 'feather' settings, along with curves adjustment layers. We now have a great benchmark from which to work and we have used the colour information to its best. Now it is important to not loose our direction in the creation of a good black and white print, so we must decide on what I call 'working zones'. These are areas where we need to enhance or alter the tonal relationships within the image to bring about the impact visualised when I was there. For this particular image I decided the areas to be the trees either side of the river, the distant gorge walls, the deepest shadow areas of the boulders in the river and the shadow areas beneath the trees. I then began a gradual process of 'nibbling' away at the tonal via curves adjustment layers beginning with the steep gorge walls in the top centre of the image.

Fig 12/13 I selected this area and opened a curved adjustment layer. Using curves I then lowered the value of the highlights and also darkened the deeper greys separating the gorge walls from the closer trees.

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• Digital Monochrome page 8
  
• Digital Monochrome page 9
  

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