How to get Great Digital Monos….
The bullet point’s below are the steps i take to process my Digital Monochrome images.To follow these steps you will require basic understanding of photoshop……..
- Once you have the chosen raw file & imported it into PS by using the Adobe camera raw or Nikon’s own Capture NX software,the first job is to have a look and decide if it needs cropping to improve the composition or to help remove something that’s obtrusive…if so crop it down and you can also use this to correct a crooked picture (is the front buffer bean leaning like the tower of Pisa??) If so you can straighten it up. (Its a good idea to save this file as a .psd once youve spent a bit of effort doing the crop & straighten.)
- Next step bring up a new curves layer select the grey eyedropper (one in the middle) and find something you think is mid grey in colour. You’ll soon know if its wrong a heavy colour cast will appear. Once you’ve got the right area click OK. (note you can view your changes by clicking on the “eye” in layers palette this turns your changes on & off.
- OK so you’ve now corrected any errors in the white balance, next job is to make bump up your contrast & tone. Bring up a new Levels layer. and pull the LHS marker (effects the blacks) on the histogram up from 0 to around 10, then select the RHS marker and pull that in from 255 to around 235-245 ( effects the whites), then the middle marker can be dragged from 1 > 1.15 max to boost the mid-tones or drop from 1> 0.85 max to drop them. Most images unless in really bright light will need a little boost in the mid-tones. If your exhaust steam looks burnt out with the whites up @ 235 then erase the area out a little but drop the opacity of the eraser to get some of the effect you want.
- Right then next warm up the image a little by opening a new layer called Colour Balance here you want to add +2 on the Cyan- Red scale & -2 on the Yellow to blue scale. This just warms the image up enough especially important on Mono’s.
- A important step for monos is to add a vignette around the main image subject to help give it more impact & hold in the image. This is easy also. In the tool box on the LHS choose the elliptical marquee tool (top LHS of the toolbox) use it to run round the bit you want to keep unchanged then right click and choose “select inverse”. This then picks out the outside area. Right now open up a new Levels layer and drag the middle cursor down to no more than 0.85. (make sure the feather is set to 250px. erase any areas you don’t want vignetting.
- Final bit is for upping or dropping highlights / shadows. Along the top go into “select” and choose colour range. choose either highlights or shadows. Add a new Levels layer and using the middle cursor bring it up from 1>1.15 max for shadows or for Highlights drop from 1> 0.85 max. If you go to far you will see it begins to look naff. Again erase out any areas you don’t want the effect to be seen.
- The final step is the actual Monochrome conversion. Now there’s many ways to do this but this way works for me! Open a new channel mixer layer and you will see 3 sliding scales the R,G,B with a little Mono tick box in the bottom LeftHandSide. Tick the Mono box and slide the scales to get your desired effect. Try these settings:- 50%Red, 50%Green & 0% Blue, if you want more effect try 75%Red, 75% Green & -50%on Blue (note the total of these 3 values always =100%) Thus was always the std way that the 3 channels should equal 100% but it doesn’t have to be anymore…Most of my new monos have a real lively blacks & whites. I achieve this by whacking up the Red channel to around 90%, drop the Green channel to around 10-15% and the Blue even lower to around 2-5%…..Just use these as a guide and find what works for you!
- And that’s about it really. Sounds a lot but its real simple after you’ve done a few hundred it becomes second nature…..If you fancy having a go and get stuck just get in touch and we could go through it step by step. It really does produce the goods. Honest!
Cheers & Happy Mono editing