PSP X-6 B&W Conversion, or Topaz B&W Effects

[MoJo Graphics]

Hey, this is Mike. New to the forum, new to PSP.

I've recently got PSP X-6 Ultimate. For converting images to B&W, does PSP do a pretty fair job, or do I need to add something like Topaz B&W Effects? Thanks

[MarkZ]

Mike:

Only you will be able to judge if PSP does a good job of creating B&W - some will say it's great, others that it is not good enough. Obvious place to start is with Effects/Photo Effects/Black and white film. There are other ways to get B&W. Play around, test everything, create some images to play with so you don't foul up some original you want to keep.

[JoeB]

Personally I prefer plugins rather than doing it with PSP, mainly because decent plugins have a wide variety of presets which, when selected, usually offer even more fine tuning of the effect. The Topaz filter has the advantage over the Nik Silver filter in that when you mouse over the various preset effects you get a large popup of your image showing the effect of the image without it yet being applied to the image in the plugin's workspace. Sliders allow fine tuning, as well as a brush for localized fine tuning. I also find it faster than Nik.

On the other hand, the Nik plugin offers Control Points, which I find extremely useful for doing local fine tuning and much better than using a brush.

If you have both, then the best of both worlds is to use Topaz to use the preset closest to what you want and do global fine tuning, then open the result in Nik to use the Control Points for local fine tuning.

EDIT: Further to what Mark said, you don't necessarily have to create separate images to play around with if you simply first add a duplicate layer to the image you want to use before opening the image in your plugin. The effects will then be applied to that duplicate layer (assuming it is the layer in focus before opening the plugin). You can add multiple duplicate layers and apply different effects to each layer and then, by turning the layers off and on be able to do quick comparisons in PSP to determine which effect you like best compared to what you started with. Just a thought.

JMHO, of course.

[MoJo Graphics]

Thanks for the replies. I'll probably get it, next time they put it on sale.

[Kathy_9]

B&W Effects is an great plug-in; in fact, all Topaz plug-ins are pretty awesome.

[GlenBarrington]

Count me firmly in the non plug-in camp for B&W conversions!

If you use the Channel mixer and select Monochrome, you can adjust the three primary colors to taste and then tweak with exposure and contrast and sharpening.

The key for a 'natural' looking B&W conversion is to make sure that you adjust the three colors so that the values in each slider don't add up to more than 100. (It's also OK to go over 100 - Experiment a bit!). For me, I've found that getting a reasonably good image with wide dynamic range for the B&W Conversion, works best, then if I need to add contrast or darken/lighten the exposure I don't have to get the EXACT tones right in the channel mixer.

It's easy to do, about as fast as the plug-ins, and doesn't cost anything in additional money!

[JoeB]

I would tend to agree that you can get excellent results using the various manual tools in PSP. My reply to the OP was based on assuming (not always a good thing to do -) ) that he was referring to a relatively quick method and perhaps comparing plugins to BW Film effect in PSP. Your methods do provide lots of control, as does using Curves and Levels, all in conjunction with the Histogram to pay attention to what you're doing to the dynamic range of the image, but of course using all these tools for tweaking is a bit more labor intensive than Topaz, for example, and not necessarily what everyone needs. JMHO, of course.