B&W Help Anybody?

Photographers Comments
Im not quite managing what I set out to achieve here...
Im annoyed with myself that I cropped the hair off in camera losing most of the white BG.
The main thing thats bugging me is the B&W conversion, the method I use for man made stuff just isnt working on skin.
I just end up either blowing out large areas of skin, or turning my white BG grey!
Can anybody help with a conversion that works on skin?

Mate there are loads..
To correct the white b/ground on this one just go to image>adjustments>levels> and look at the three eye droppers in the levels screen (bottom right). The right hand side one is the white point. Click on that and then on your background, the bit that should be white. Then move the middle slider until you have a reasonable starting point on the girls face.
For my mono conversions I tend to go via the channel mixer route. There are quite a number of other routes though bud.

Yep the channel mixer is my usual route.
Mate you are a bloody genius, I just said to Vicki this will just blow the skin out again, WRONG!
Done what you said, mask over the eye, jobs a goodun.

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My pleasure mate.

There are some great plugins out there too mate. Alien skin do some good ones (and some bloody awful ones too).

If you find a really good method that you feel would help the newer photoshop users, then create an action and share with the phototpix community.

never tried the channel route, always done the desat way and adjusted slightly the contrast with curves
when going for a white BG be careful that the BG isnt too dark..you end up changing the whole image whilst getting the white..better way to do it would be to use dodge tool, set it highlights and i use 4%. slow rub over BG getting desired white without changing anything else..

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Yeah true, I used to do the desat way but ended up with the channel mixer because of the images content verying so much though i still use curves but in the later stages.
Also.. I forgot to say do the levels as an adjustment layer, then quickmask and softbrush it in as needed.

Welcome to optikVerve Labs - Downloads
The above Link may help the less experienced Photographer. The Plugin is Free and I use it with PhotoShop Elements 4, so it may help those that don't have the more serious Photo Editor.
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