dark, gloomy landscapes in b&w editing tips?

[alex gard]

Hi all
I have been fumbling around with photoshop for a few years now and still haven't quite seemed to 'master' it yet and achieve what I really want. My results usually end up looking really disappointing and either overcooked or cooked the wrong way. I have got the book "The Digital Darkroom" and have followed some of the tutorials in it, particularly when it comes to dodging and burning (and with layer masks etc) but still seems like I'm doing something wrong (could also be that my original images to begin with aren't 'right' for the kind of editing I want to do)

I even went so far as reading some of Joel Tjintjelaar's tutorials however his work is quite surreal and probably not as 'far' as I want to go. I really appreciate darker, gloomy, lonely empty landscapes (you know, lone trees, fjords, misty mountains etc)

I have attached a picture of something similar I am talking about by photographer Andy Lee. I have a feeling some of his work is done in infrared, too.

I really like burnt edges, very dark images. I read in a tutorial about never quite going as far as 'zone 0' or 'zone 10' to retain detail. This makes sense, but I still have a lot of trouble putting this into practice in photoshop. I do not have access to a dark room to print my own paper however I do develop my own film. I use 4x5 and 120. the negatives are scanned on v700

I appreciate that some might say it is helpful to shoot in infrared, at the moment I use a red 25 filter, and will also soon start shooting with Ilford sfx200 film and a dark red filter (when the dark red comes)

If anybody could point me in some kind of direction or give me any tips and pointers, I would really appreciate it.

thanks

 

[alex gard]

also, any books or reading material that could help out would be good particularly for negative-to-digital photo editing. I've seen some books on amazon about b&w digital photography but don't want to jump the gun. I only use film.

 

[DennyS]

It might help if you could post some examples of scans and photoshop attempts that you aren't happy with.

 

[jeffreyg]

I may be giving the wrong advice, but have you tried taking the same shot at different exposures? Perhaps one exposed for maximum shadow detail, one for maximum highlight detail and one off a gray card. Scan all three and see if your exposure technique is correct. Also do you do any correction before scanning like with the scanning software such as SilverFast? Then tweak with PhotoShop. I don't know how you burn or dodge but consider making a new layer select soft light as the mode check the box "Fill with soft-light neutral color (50% gray). Use black to darken (burn) and white (dodge) and adjust the fill and opacity with the sliders. Use a brush sized according to what amount of the image you want to burn or dodge. You can merge the layers once you are satisfied with the result or keep them separate. To burn the edges use a fairly large brush with soft edges keeping the darkest portions at the outside edges of the image so you get a graduated effect. By using layers you can always adjust with the sliders or trash the layer if it doesn't work for you. You can turn the layers off and on to see the differences. There are also plugins for PS that have built in effects such as OnOne Perfect Photo Suite 8 that works with PS or as a stand alone and Pixel Genius's Photo Kit that is a PS plugin. A good reference book for PS is Martin Evening's Adobe Photoshop for Photographers.

I'm sure others more knowledgeable than me will have other suggestions but these have worked well for me since I too use 4x5 and 120 negatives and scan with my old Epson 4870. I recently had a couple of negatives one 4x5 and one 120 printed to 30x40 inches having used those techniques to prepare the image files for the prints.

HOME

 

[pschwart]

There is no magic formula or workflow, and *lots* of ways to achieve the same result in Photoshop. Once you visualize an image, then it's a lot of practice in Photoshop to get there. Visualization is personal. For example, I think the image you uploaded would be much more effective with just a bit more shadow detail.
To each his own.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

attached is my my best ever attempt.Itwasn't hard but took some time and was not at all unlike the darkroom work on the same print.

 

[Hatchetman]

Ralph - does that have some kind of tint to it? It looks kind of greenish.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Ralph - does that have some kind of tint to it? It looks kind of greenish.

to me too actually;welcome to the world of futile calibrationbut then againmaybe we see the same greenish tint;so it's calibrated in a way