So… I’m reading this great tutorial by rutt over at Dgrin (Digital Grin, folks!) called “B&W Conversion Workflow“, and I’m reading through it and see he has included a little Photoshop Action set. As rutt puts it:
“I have an action which aides to to getting to this point. Pick it up here.”
Brief and to the point.
So… I go and download this thing and put it in my Photoshop Actions folder, and load it into my actions pallette with Photoshop running to try it out it on a color photo.
And, lo and behold, this baby not only contains rutt’s two little actions, it also possesses a complete “realization” by Robin L. Holden, Sr. of Greg Gorman and Mac Holbert’s quite innovative B&W conversion action (… as described in the only PDF that exists in Greg’s “Learn” section — titled “Black and White Conversion Tutorial” — find that PDF at http://www.gormanphotography.com/gorman.html under the “Learn” section.)
BTW – That’s THE Greg Gorman – one of the most amazing B&W photographers of all time presenting a how-to tutorial at his website on building a Photoshop Action to be used to create B&W shots from color ones!!!
And Who is this Mac Holbert, you ask? Go look at his stellar website, “Powered by Light” (http://www.rmacholbert.com/).
Well, well! Another one of the greats in B&W photography!
Interesting collaboration to produce a Photoshop Action, eh? Especially one converting color photos to black and white ones. I’d qualify these two as being pretty “picky” when it comes to quality assessments of B&W from Color conversions!
That rutt includes this “realization” action along with his own technique is a very generous offer. His own and the Gorman/Holbert techniques BOTH produce very nice results, and leave the adjustment layers there for finer tweaking after the actions are run.
I suggest you take a look at rutt’s post and at the PDF at gormanphotography.com, download the action set, and give both approaches a try! (Here’s an alternate download link at my Amazon S3 server in case that link above breaks in the future: B&W Action DeLuxe!
I never thought my Greg Gorman-Holbert action would be so popular!
It came about through a discussion we had on TexasPhotoForum
(http://www.texasphotoforum.com)
I thought if we were going to discuss this process we needed to automate it , so I created the action and posted it on TPF.
I am so glad everyone has found it useful and thanks for all the great compliments!
Robin Holden Sr