Topic awaiting preservation: Enhancing Black and White Photographs (Page 1 of 1)

I'm working on restoring a WWII photo album and I'm looking for ways of "enhancing" the photographs as I restore them. However searching the net for techniques and ideas for black and white photos returns mostly colorising and desaturating topics. Does anyone have any good resources for working on black and white photographs?

Nightshade AKA Skitzo
Master of Mahem
Reign Of Choas

Well, as always there are several ways to enhance B/W Images. Your best bet propably is to do a Curves or Level Adjustment Layer.
An excellent tutorial on the curves can be found here Intro to Curves

Maybe have a look at the Tutorials Section at Retouchpro Tutorials.

With the above suggestions I am guessing that you want to improve the tonal quality of the photos. Maybe if you post the image someone might be able to give you more specific advice . Hope that helps a little

sib

True, I'm using levels and Curves to bring out allot of the faded portions of the photos and such. To be more specific by enhancing I'd more likely to be meaning special effects to make the image more striking after I'm done repairs. Sort of like using a soft portrait effect to bring subjects out of a background. I'm fairly proficient with repairs and the like but links to good sites are always usefull.

Here is an example of what I mean, in this case it's a color photo but I'm looking for nice artistic effects for B&W



And no it's not me but I have permission to use the photo.

Nightshade AKA Skitzo
Master of Mahem
Reign Of Choas

(Edited by Nightshade on 06-28-2004 23:50)

I cann't see the image.

Before I plug some links that might maybe help. You have to remember that any tutorial is only a demonstration of a technique . It doesn't matter if it is color or B/W the mechanics are either the same or similar and can be expanded on.

The possibilities are endless with Portraits - Sepia, Du-tone, the different blending modes, Vinegettes and on it goes.

To best of my knowledge there is not a site out there that covers all of those techniques. It is a difficult to point you in the right direction or explain without a reference of what kind of effect you after.

Maybe you could try and repost the image to narrow things down a little.

Sorry

sib

Can you be a bit more specific on "nice artistic effects" ?

if you are going to use Levels or Curves, be sure to use Adjustment layers and not to the actual image layer.

made that mistake once too many.

Later,

C:\


~Binary is best~

Hmm it won't let me edit the pic address. I know about vignets and the other traditional techniques.

I'm simply looking for suggestions for Black and White photos. Most of these are over 50 years old and I'm going to be putting them into a slide show when I'm done restoring them. I am trying to spice up the slide show a little by adding to the photos. As for my earlier example I can't access my FTP from here and I guess the site I was using to upload won't let me remote link so I'll forget it for now.

In anycase I'm just looking for suggestions or examples of what can be applied to B&W photos as opposed to the standard stuff that can be used on color. Heck not sure that there is much of anything out there that only works for B&W.

Nightshade AKA Skitzo
Master of Mahem
Reign Of Choas

Someone said to me once " You set your own limitations in what you do or cann't do"

Maybe have a look here

You might trip over something that you are looking for .

sib