Digital Color to B&W - Part 2

Former Vermont Railway nee Texas Mexican GP60 bought by BNSF

I wanted to start my project with a red locomotive to see if I could get the correct tonal values in a b&w version, so that it would be convincing to the viewer that it was indeed, a red locomotive. This photo generally lacks contrast, and has good shadow detail.  


All screen prints are from Picasa 3.9

This is the result of selecting Filtered B&W with no color of filter selected. Things look a little flat.

This is with a yellow filter, tones are lighter.

Blue filter both darkens and muddies the tone

The orange filter gave me the effect I was looking for. The red comes out as a medium value.

To give the image more contrast, I pumped the fill light, and darkened the shadows.

Next, I used the Graduated Tint tool with a neutral color to darken the sky.

Next step was to apply a slightly warm tint to the image.

The finished product. This B&W photo is much more about form than the color version.