Along the lines of yesterday’s post: another pair of pictures that bear comparing between the color and B&W versions. I trust you can tell the difference:

Rolling Kohala Hills

Rolling Kohala Hills, B&W

I never really intended to process this in B&W. To me, the tones of the green & blue of the sky were far too similar, and the low contrast would do no-one any favors.  After being prompted by a Flickr-friend, I decided to go for it.  This took a surprising amount of time to come up with something I found halfway passable.  Most of the work was done in NIK Silver Efex, with a tiny bit of dodging after that, and a very controlled sharpening layer in the end.

Overall steps:

• In Silver EFex, left defaults at “Normal”, then:
  • Dropped structure by 10% (roughly)
  • Upped contrast by 10% (roughly)
  • Added an orange filter (red was too harsh)
  • Added control points in the sky & darkened
  • Added control points to the left bank of clouds & slightly upped structured
  • Added control points to grass, slightly upped contrast and structure, lowered/darkened grass
  • Added control point to shadow, darkened
  • Added small control point to tree, lightened, dropped contrast (!), and upped structure significantly
  • Processed to a new layer
• On the new layer: dodged the tree slightly, at 30%.  A few passes, lightly, on a tablet.  Eventually got some detail back in.
• Added luminosity sharpening layer, then masked to hide everything.  Brought back in the tree, left everything else unsharpened.  Tree was at 80% opacity by the end.