Skip to main content

Black and White Batch Workflow

Lesson 6 from: Create Better Black and White Photographs

Chris Orwig

Black and White Batch Workflow

Lesson 6 from: Create Better Black and White Photographs

Chris Orwig

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2000+ more >

Lesson Info

6. Black and White Batch Workflow

Lesson Info

Black and White Batch Workflow

What I want to do is see if I can find my demo file where'd that guy go here? Okay, just just to reiterate a point real quick, I go to develop module with this color thing I hit the wiki and I command three to go to that air control three black and white mix and the point with this is that what we can do here is some pretty wild stuff, right? And we can say like, well, no, I want my awkward to be bright and everything else not and really what we're trying to do is figure out what's the subtlety of the great asian or what's the drama we're trying to build and so using these sliders, you've really got to get into him. I know I'm talking about skin tones because I like people that maybe you like flowers, you know, use the stuff with flowers or landscapes or whatever it is this is relevant to a lot of different things, all right? Well, let's talk about automation and automation but is speeding up what we do and looking at how we do that these air, some family, friends of ours, one of my da...

ughters, best buds and her big sister and I was I don't necessarily dio family porcher, but I love photographing friends and family I just love that stuff there's something about it so let's say, with this image, I'm going to convert it to black and white, you guys know the deal, we go v and then we say, well, I with my portrait like to have the little more stuff with the skin, the eyes are blue in this picture, so maybe I want to bring up my blues a little bit in command one goes back here, I want to have some more contrast, and as I'm building this up, I'm getting to a pretty good kind of neutral place with this image, what would I need to do with my my shadows under my eyes, right? And what might get rid of those lots of ways to do that in light room, we can use the spot removal tool, which, you know, the short cut for because we talked about that you remember it now. Q. Yes, q q for quickly removing stuff. So anyway, that shot it looks horrible, but I'm healing in a one hundred percent capacity. I'm going to just scale it back just a little bit, right? Because tonality is really important, we wouldn't really maybe one to notice that on the color image. Yeah, what do you do when light room? Does this it like, select the lip t touch the I like, come on like like really that yeah so you press the forward slash key and the foreign slashes like light room come on let's move forward in time let's get better and it's amazing like if you have something on an edge a lot of times it can align that edge it didn't do the perfect job there for me but sometimes that forward slash magic magic so here feather that's my edges wanting a soft edges and I'm just you know, taking those out ok? All right well either way we have this adjustment and what I want to do with this adjustment is apply it to another image but I want them to have the black and white excuse me but I don't want them to have that the stuff under the eyes for example let's say we go here you know it's like two different people or that maybe it's a different posture whatever way have a few different options and on how we can work with this one of them is to press shift command see on a mac shift control cnn opens up our copy settings, dialogue and with the copy settings I can say hey, you know what? I want everything I want to do all this stuff maybe I've done my noise reduction and whatnot but just don't don't copy over the brush stuff so I copy that and I go to another image shift command the and that will then pace those settings over there of course you can selectively choose other things, but the point is that's a great way to be able to speed up your work flow. All right, well, let's, talk about one more thing, which is when I'll stay here doesn't have a great smile, by the way. Just so, like like, look at this, you know that vibrant, bright smile anyway, um, and this family has they have three daughters to I have three daughters it's always fun to meet people like that. All right, enough sidetracks, let's get let's, get moving! Mac laskowski! How awesome is matt he's a great guy. He he often says the most overlooked in the best button in light room says something like that's a previous button and what we can do with that is when we moved to another image and click on previous it says whatever we did last time, do it to this one and this is true whether we jump around like I go back to the beginning of my folder and I hit previous I mean, however we do that it's just bringing all of those other things over on dh so that's a nice way to speed up your work flow or test out ideas now you're moving forward, this image might be good like that, but a little bit darker you know so like what this one here are going to test this idea I say ok, well skin tones are too bright but it was a good starting point, you know, I know that I needed some of that I need deeper shadows and my exposure was a little bit different on that but you can see where I'm kind of crafting this image and creating that mood question yeah so if you apply previous what if you had done the spot healing brush under the eyes and then the next photo was in a different position with the spot healing be in the wrong place so let me show you that I think that's the best way to answer it which is a great question so if we have spot healing like we do in this one and then we go to this image here and hit previous the trick is we might not notice it but if we open up our spot healing brush you can see these two spots right here fortunately was like on hair and just copied hair to hair and that was fine, but that obviously could be a real big problem but also could be a big benefit to you know, if, um report that it's in a similar place and you know, I'm just going to say something silly but the person has three zits on their cheek and even though they're moving like this, you could have those three spots in this nudge him to the right thing, and so sometimes it does pay off. All right, let's, look atmore this speeding stuff up, all right? We're going to go to this one. People always say don't photograph it noon I don't agree nunes amazing for black and white I mean that's like so much conflict it's crazy it's like noon and what I'm going to do with this image I go d for develop gonna select all in the film straight down below. So click and shift click all those little images down there are selected a couple options with what we can do with these if we have them all selected, we can click on the sync button. I'm just gonna hail mary this do everything on a synchronized it all and then I'm going to turn on saying auto think but clicking on my flip switch so as I press the wiki what's going to happen to my thumbnails down below is there now all converted to black and white and then as I make my exposure in my contrast of my blacks and shadows, whatever it is and not even really looking at the images but they are already looking a lot better, you can see how that's happening at once and what I I was trying to do with this as well is not just talk about software, which is important, but and I moved finding these a little bit more, but those were pretty good looking images shot at noon and the reason why I want to bring up that point is as you're shooting remembers about photography, there are certain ways to get more out of your images and you can shoot differently when you have that black and white mindset, you know? And when you're thinking about what's happening, even you know, with me and people photography, if I have big shadows under eyes, I know I need to move the subject color and black and white but black and white more so all right, the other way we can you sink is that this button is off and we click off of our images and we then click on tio a couple of them just click on toe we just click on the one going to develop module that's where I need to be set up my environment and all right now we'll click onto turnoff autistic um just for the record modifying your images in the library module is on ly at least in my work clothes on ly relevant when I have images of different exposure that I need to incrementally move up from where they are, so when you have this is kind of complicated, but if you have under an overexposed images and you synchronize those together the both move up like this in the developed module they do this and then move up so honors where they were in the library module the develop module doesn't care where it wass that may not make sense to you, but if it does awesome but anyway sync here so what we can do with this one is we can make an adjustment toe one image, so I'm just swinging this one really, really hard. Maybe I'm going to add in some split tony and add some color and it just so you can see what's happening well, that's bad color but you get the idea and then when I hit sync dot dot dot dots in software always means dialogue so dot opens my dialogue hey, what do you want to synchronize, ana? Synchronize everything then it's going to take that over and now both of these images have those those two characteristics so yet another way optimize our work flow. Let me take your question one second I want to do just a couple more things here and what I want to do is this this is we have a mutual friends and when the audience here violent here and what I want to do with eases, I've decided that I might want to convert the images to black and white, but I want to have black and white and color versions of the photographs, so so what I'm going to do is so we can see it back here is let's say I'm going to select all the files in the library module command and for a new collection control in on windows and say, hey, I want to create a new collection set and this is also great if you're like a wedding photographer and you want all color images, you want all black and white, you create a new collection and I'm just going to call this my studio portrait ce black and whites and make sure these are all new virtual copies and what that will do for me is it will give me the ability to say, ok, this image I like and we saw before, if we liken image, we can do a lot of different things we could use our previous button there's also a crop on that photograph, so I'm kind of liking how that's bringing all these, you know, up a little, the closer under subject so I have all of these images here and just look at those requip kind of see that set, but I also have back here the color versions, right? So the color versions are living there, as are the black and whites the reason why that's helpful is because I don't know about you, but I don't always know if black and whites better, you know, sometimes I come back to it, I get so attracted to the color because but then I come back later and like, oh, it's, more subtle and having that little collection can help me get into that space and have those sort of separate versus together like this. There was a question which I ignored. Sorry about that, but yeah, what was your question? Yeah, so earlier you had mentioned when you sink in, develop mode if respects where each exposure is, is that I understand that correctly. Yes. And maybe I should try to do that, like like what I was saying is in the library module, um, if we select multiple images, and if we work with synchronization here, if we make even adjustments to multiple files with auto sink like I'm clicking up, what that will do is whatever the settings are exposure, contrast, highlights. It will take those, and we will incrementally push those up. If we do it, then develop module and I have two images that I auto sink, and I say I want the exposure to goto one they both go to one so it doesn't matter where it is, so library is really good if you have different exposures, but you realize you go back like, oh my gosh, all my images need a little bit of clarity. Select them all auto sink. They all get two points of clarity or a little bit of sharpening, or a little bit of noise reduction versus versus everyone gets ten clarity, because, you know, some images don't like ten, you know, and so, yeah, did that make sense. Clarify what? Yeah, sorry, those confusing earlier does the same thing work in the quick developed settings in library quick, developed yet same thing, meaning can you find that a little more meeting relative adjustments, as opposed to over ologists libraries, relative develop is absolute. When it comes to auto sink, here we go. That wasn't in my notes, but is valuable that throw that in there.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Chris Orwig - Create Better BW Photos - Reference Guide.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

user-11539f
 

I LOVED this and loved Chris as a teacher! I get frustrated when the teachers jump around and don't explain things thoroughly. But Chris is great! Lots of new helpful ways to do things. Very informative and very helpful. I have purchased countless Creative Live classes and he is a new favorite! Thank you Chris!!

Rebecca George
 

one of my very favorite teachers -- love this class and found it SO helpful. Chris is so great about repeating the important stuff in a way that makes it stick. This class gave me the tools to be able to edit more quickly and efficiently. Totally worth the money.

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES