Originally posted by steelcult
Hate to disagree with you eric but heres a good example: http://public.fotki.com/LBehm/pctures_from_iraq/other_albums/march_05/07700013.html
Take a look at that picture, then the one that follows it - they were both taken using 100 speed color film, processed normally, then the first one was stripped of color using PS - tweeked and posted. Looks pretty black and white to me.
And I know how it was done, cause I did it.
You\'re right of course, that with the proper ability in photoshop it isn\'t hard to take a color photo and make it look good in BW. What I meant to say however is that it is hard to take a color photo and turn it BW to look good in photoshop, but still make it look like it\'s a color photo of a BW painted miniature.
When you take a photo of a BW miniature, it\'s not simply black and white, if use the analytic tools in photoshop you\'ll see it\'ll be a wide combination of all the colors, even if in small ammounts. If someone desaturates a photo, it will not have this, and more over our eye will pick it up. I think our eyes are extrodinarily sensitive to issues like this, we can recognize neutral grey and it stands out to use because it\'s basically not naturally occuring.
Also when I say it\'s harder to paint in color to get an effective BW result is because when working in color, people tend to think about blending colors and color contrast/composition and tend to forget about tonal blending/contrats/composition, which is the essence of working in B/W. When you paint in B/W you are forced to think in these terms because you can not fall back on color to get the effects you want. So painting in color, then turning it B/W can often result in poor use of tone, contrast & composition.
