B&W The Real Silver Effex Thread and Gallery is now online.

Great idea Don, let's share the wealth of knowledge and experience along with the photographic images.:2thumbs:

Now for those of us who have Silver Efex 2 - if we think of it, it is possible to copy and save one's history of edits. I did it the other day...but I haven't figured out a real system for this sort of thing. Often, but not always, I use keyword to remind myself of what I did. Most of the time I start off with my DNG file and add a touch of clarity...but not always, then go into Color Efex before I hit Silver Efex. I will try to put up some examples for which I remember more details.
 
Every single B&W conversion I have done since Fall 2010 has been with Silver Efex. It is a fantastic piece of software.

These are my latest conversions:

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The clutches and fans were hand painted by my wife. She asked if I would take some photographs that she could use for documentation and promotional purposes. The photos were taken in a stairwell at the premises of the Puerto Rico Museum of Contemporary Art, using my Canon EOS 50D (sorry, not compact) and 17-40mm 4.0L lens. The photographs were processed as follows:

1. RAW files were converted with Adobe Camera Raw and opened in Photoshop CS5.

2. A curves adjustment layer was applied to add some contrast.

3. Silver Efex was opened as an Adjustment Layer. I used the High Structure preset and sepia toning. On some of the shots adjustment points were used to lighten shadows or tame highlights.

4. A mask was painted on the Silver Efex layer to allow for the selective color of the clutches and fans.

5. Finally, the file was sharpened using Unsharp Mask.

My wife was very pleased with the results.

Cheers,

Antonio
 
I'm with your wife - and Don - really smart idea to show off the colors and artistry of your wife's creations. I'm sure that the location of the shots will be a big plus too and hope that it's mentioned in her advertisements, etc. Maybe the museum will even carry them in their gift store!

Your workflow is beyond my capabilities - no Photoshop, as you know, for me, however I really do appreciate reading the details. It helps me to understand the effort that goes into images like these.
 
That's a nice gentle conversion Amin.
I like the way the tones and contrast are in the B&W.
Welcome to the SEP club.

There are free webinars that are very interesting.
 
Here are a few from this weekend from our trip over to visit family on Vancouver Island.

Yellow Peppers
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Marzipan
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Dandelion Head
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Shot handheld with an E-PL1 with CV 75mm f2.5 lens (plus Raynox M250 on the last shot). RAW files processed in SEP using custom presets.

(I tend to find a preset that's close and then rework it to give me what I'm looking for, and then save that for further use. This often involves choosing a specific film type and adding a vignette. I also do quite a bit of localized dodge & burn with Control Points, although not for these particular images.)

Cheers,
 
I was a bit skeptical about plugin software...until I tried the Nik stuff for the first time. Trouble is I have a bad habit of forgetting exactly what filter I used for a particular image, and it is confused further by the way you can take an image through multiple filters in Silver Efex and Color Efex.

I think this one was using one of the dynamic filters, and was a conversion of an old Canon 350D jpeg.

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One thing to note with the high contrast Silver Efex filters that draw out detail is that they are EXTREMELY unforgiving of sensor dust. This shot was taken back in late 2008, which was long before I had any of the LensPen products for cleaning lens and sensors, and was shot at f/13 on a 20mm lens which is recipe for dust bunnies if ever there was one. The dust spots don't show up too badly on the original at this scale, and don't even come close to showing the ones that were drawn out by applying the filter. This was a major spot heal and clone stamp exercise.

P.S. Don, you've given one too many f's in the thread title.
 
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