Week 5 – #3. Before/After

January 17, 2016 by faybina75 11 Comments

I love to convert my portraits to black and white wherever possible, so I decided that it would be interesting to show the Before/After versions of one of my recent portraits. This is because I feel that the impact of the image in B and W is usually so much greater:  facial expressions seem to be more pronounced and dramatic because distracting colored details are eliminated. In the case below, I first processed the image in LR 5 and in PS CC. I then edited the image in to Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.  This is the only plug-in I use for converting an image to black and white. For those of you who have used Nik Silver Efex, you know that there are many presets available for portraits. I really don’t have a favorite one yet, so I try out many of them to see which one seems to fit the portrait I am converting. Then I tweak the preset setting using the sliders provided. (I never use the preset straight up.)  My last step is to try out a vignette, or to burn the edges of the photo. Most often, I choose one or the other. If you have any comments or feedback to give me, I would love to hear them! In this case, I feel that the B and W version has more impact. Please let me know if you feel differently.