Greek skin tones

It has been a few weeks since my last post. I have missed your comments on my work, but have been reading the various posts. Here is a fellow with darker skin tones. I am wondering how to lighten the image (skin tones), yet still maintain the rich blacks in his eyes, hair and black jacket. Shot with two diffuser umbrellas each side, strobes with a small ratio dif. I look forward to your comments as always.

I don't like the conversion, do you have a color one, I can work my magic.  wink wink

Firstly, try to set white balance in camera, it will save you time later. The gray shirt made it easy to color balance, however, if there was no gray in the image, it can be tricky.

Exposure was set in Camera Raw
Gray eye dropper was used to find 128 for RGB, close enough, haha
Then it was converted to B/W in photoshop, there are so many methods, however, because of the color correction and exposure, you'll find the image won't look as muddy.

Whoa! What a pro very nice, I will do as you suggest, thanks Mike.

Dwardo,

Mike's instructions certainly provide a good solution as do Bob's.  Your initial try produced a very flat image with very little midrange separation.  It's interesting that this was often a problem that beginners had when I was teaching a B&W wet darkroom class!

I suspect that part of the problem comes from the fact that many of us have forgotten how deep and rich a quality B&W image can be.  I would suggest that you look back into the past and study some of the excellent B&W portraiture done in the past and then play in post processing until you can begin to reach that look.

Ed

Thanks I agree with you. In my attempt to do a conversion I de-saturated the color, went into hue in PS, chose a cold blue cast, and ended up with a flat "steamer". I have a nice collection of Bruno Bernard's work, a Hollywood photographer who was very popular in the 40-50s. He was the one who photographed MM with the billowing white skirt. I will review his studio work and copy the lighting and drama of the work, as well as taking the instruction of you and Mike. Cool. Hope this photo is not too risque for the post, it was shot in 1954.