Awards

Photoshop User Online Rating
/ PSU Rating: 5/5 stars Jan. 2006.
See the review here

Best of the Best Graphics Software by Cybia - given only to software already granted the Quality Software award

Selected by Digital Outback Photo as an essential workflow tool. See review here.

Benefits
of the plugin

A black and white photography digital darkroom.
Light sensitivity of professional films (Kodak Tri-X, T-MAX, etc.) preset.
Define your own light sensitivity curves - and save them for later.
Color-filters (like camera-filters: yellow, orange, etc.).
Multigrade range 00 to 5 - with an extra step at each end.
Exposure equivalent to f-stops.
Highlight and shadow control.
Zone adjustments - three zones available with eyedroppers and zone width option
Now also for color photos!

The Black & White Studio plugin works with these image modes (Windows and Mac)...
8 & 16 bit / channel: RGB, Grayscale, Duotone, CMYK

Black & White Studio
controls

This is the Black and White Studio plug-ins control panel at one fourth size. Actually the plugin has so many filter options, that we had to arrange them on two "pages" in the win version and on three in the Mac version You change "page" with a click.

The plugin has four groups of filter-controls:
Lens-filters = Colored lensfilters, like yellow, orange, etc.
Film = Film spectral sensitivity w. preset films.
Print = Multigrade, exposure, contrast, etc.
Zones = Three selectable and adjustable zones

Example -
The plug-ins T400CN filter

The plugin has algorithms to convert colors to black & white with the light-sensitivity of professional films.

It has the most popular films from Kodak, Ilford and Agfa.

Excellence of Power Retouche (Pro version only) - Important note!

Imortant difference between processing
RGB vs CMYK images

This plug-ins true magic shines forth when used on images in CMYK mode because we made it take advantage of CMYK's K channel (used for black definition and contrast) in special ways. In CMYK mode you can get the same magic texture as classic high quality prints. The control panel screenshot above also illustrates an example of this. The images throughout this tutorial are, however, done in RGB mode.

The plugin filter does a slight dynamic range compression on the K channel and some other tricks. If you filter images in CMYK mode, you will aquire greater richness of tones and richer definition of detail. Notice in the example that the CMYK image has more tones in the dark and light areas, and is not so hard. Yet it still has more black definition of skin pores. Also there are more rich shades of intermediate gray, which are invaluable when making high quality prints. Yet notice the real look of a high quality B/W print with both conversions.

Black & White Studio plugin - Tutorial & tips

Several "pages" of controls

This plugin is a very elaborate filter and it has a lot of controls. So many, that we had to place them on several "pages". However they are arranged in four logical groups: Lens color-filters, Film, Print and Zones. You change between the pages of controls by selecting the page you want from the combobox at the tope of the plug ins controlpanel.

Color

If you check this box, the filter does not convert to black and white, but instead let's you do advanced editing on color photos. The black & white film emulations do of course not make sense as such, but you can still use the film sensitivity sliders to control how bright you want the individual colors.

The plug-ins "Film" filtering controls

Lens color-filter

The popup-menu has the seven primary colors preset. Strength will set the saturation of the color-filter. The selected color and strength will be displayed in the colored rectangle. You can set the filter-color to any of about 1000 different colors with the slider. After you have clicked on the slider, you can move it with the left/right arrow keys on the keyboard for accuracy (this keyboard adjustment is possible with all sliders).

Lens color-filter examples

The following examples show the seven preset filter-colors at their full strength. They were all converted with the neutral Perceptual Luminance method.

Film Light-Sensitivity

These seven sliders let you determine the sensitivity to the range of light wavelengths centered round the the specified color. The wavelengths specified represent the pure color at the center. Magenta is not a pure wavelength, hence its value (400) is in brackets. In color theory one operates with the term "purple line" to handle the purple colors that appear as unique colors to the human eye, but in reality are a mixture of the red and blue ends of the spectrum. Since they are a mixture, there is no wavelength to represent them. We placed magenta at the ultraviolet end of the spectrum since it's more akin to visible violet than invisible infrared.

The Film type presets lets you quickly set the seven sliders to an equivalent of some popular professional films.

In addition we have added orthochromatic, panchromatic and perceptual luminance. Perceptual luminance is calculated according to the CIE Luv norm and is considered a neutral, even conversion. Orthochromatic and Panchromatic are PowerRetouche's own based on generic spectral sensitivity charts from Kodak, Ilford etc.

Why not Infrared filters?

We have had several requests for infrared plugin filters, so we will explain why we have no such plug-ins. The answer is simple:

Infrared images can not be extrapolated from regular photos: They have no infrared information in them! A photo only has information from the visible spectrum - obviously, otherwise parts of the image would be invisible - and the infrared band is invisible. Infrared films transpose the invisible infrared rays to a part of the spectrum in the visible range - or to white in Black & White IR photography. So unless the original film is infrared-sensitive and does that transposition, it's not possible to extrapolate IR data from photos. Anyone who claims to provide an infrared filter, plugin or otherwise, for regular photos, is providing a look a like. You can never emulate a real infrared photo, only make an imitation.

Examples of converting a digital spectrum

When we chose the films to emulate, we were guided by a wish to cover the large variations in sensitivity to green. Where the green sensitivity was the same, like with TRI-X and APX100, they were selected to cover the range of different sensitivity to blue and red. You will notice Tri-X is slightly less sensitive to green than APX, so Tri-X ought to be placed after APX. But the difference in green sensitivity is small (5 %) and we wanted to group those with low sensitivity to red and blue together, so APX belongs together with HP5, DELTA 100 and PAN F. T400CN should also be in this group, but its sensitivity to green made us place it above Tri-X. This way we also managed to keep the film-brands together (TMAX, T400CN and TRI-X are from Kodak, APX is from Agfa and the rest are from Ilford).

Click on any of the images below to see it larger in a new window.

Film	Filtered digital spectrum	Top = Plugin filtered scan of a printed spectrum Below = Photos of the same spectrum scan taken with the films
Original strip
Panchromatic
Orthochromatic
Perceptual
TMAX
T400CN
TRI-X
APX 100
HP5+
DELTA 100
PAN F+

The plug-ins "Print" filtering controls

Print controls

Grouped under the heading "Print" you will find all the classic darkroom print techniques such as multigrade, exposure, highlight correction, shadow correction, etc.

As you will see from the examples below, the multigrade levels and exposure stops are extremely truthfull...

Multigrade filtering

The plugin can do all the multigrade levels. Traditional multigrade paper ranges from 00 to 5. The plugin has these levels and even an extra one in either end. Since the slider can't display 00 (or our extra 000), we have decided to designate 000 as -2 and 00 as -1. Level 2 and 3 are the normal levels suited for most images.

Examples of the plug-ins multigrade filtering

In the following examples of how the plugin does multigrade, we filtered the photo using the neutral method Perceptual Luminance and only changed the multigrade settings.

Please observe that both the high degree of tonal variation as well as the delicate grays typical of paper multigrade are preserved throughout, even at the the extreme end.

Tips on setting the plugin's filtering

When considering what filter-settings to use, the following few words will illustrate the difference between controlling contrast with the light sensitivity controls or with multigrade.

Basically B&W photography has only one string to play with: grays and their contrast. Yet how that contrast comes about is a very complex matter. The films light sensitivity will change contrast by making some colors brighter or darker than others - and different films do this in each their way. In the portrait below you could enhance contrast by making the magenta lips dark and the skin tones light (for example). After the colors have been converted to grays, you could edit contrast further by manipulating the given grays, and this secondary editing is what multigrade is all about. In the Film spectral Sensitivity area you have to think in terms of color, but in the Print area, you have to think in terms of hardness, softness and contrast within the given range of grays.

In the portrait below we used Perceptual Luminance, which gives a neutral conversion. In addition we brightened up the highlights.

Contrast filtering

Contrast is somewhat similar to multigrade, but multigrade has more focus on hardness and softness than contrast as such. It's nice to be able to adjust contrast independently of the grade of the paper since combinations of low multigrade with raised contrast (or the reverse) can give nice results.

The plug-in lets you adjust dark contrast and light contrast independently. The example to the right was filtered with Perceptual Luminance at multigrade 3 and without contrast adjustment

Exposure stops

The Exposure Stops slider is carefully calibrated to do the same as regular aperture/exposure stops (see examples below). The slider allows from minus 1 1/3 to plus 1 1/3 stops. The exposure slider designates steps of 1/3 with the value 0.33, 2/3 with 0.66 etc.

Examples of exposure filtering compared to Fuji standards

Fuji chart of exposures

This chart is mainly concerned with push processing, but third column illustrates normal exposure bracketing and is used for the above. See the full size scan here (225 kb jpeg) if you want to verify these examples for yourself. [Scanned from: Fuji Pro-Value, August 2001, vol. 6].

Balance

Balance shifts the midpoint between the bright and dark ends of the images value-range. If you have used Photoshops levels you know you can shift the midpoint by moving the middle slider. This is the same thing. In effect it alters the apparent (average) "brightness" of the image, but it is really not brightness as such. Balance shifts the values of the mid-value pixels to either darker or lighter values, but does not alter the value of either extreme. Brightness (when the term is used correctly) raises or lowers the entire range equally. It's a very different operation - bear this in mind when you come to the zone controls, where you are offered controls for both Balance and Brightness.

Think of "Balance" as balancing the values on either side of the middle by shuffling brighter or darker value to either side. Remember the middle value is 128. This value is a tradition derived from 8-bit images. We have preserved it as such even when the plugin is applied to 16-bit images.

Examples of Balance filtering

All five are filtered with Tri-X and identical settings. Only balance was changed.

Highlights & Shadows

These two sliders let you change the brightness of highlights and/or shadows specifically.

Examples of highlights and shadows filtering

Highlight alert & Black alert

Saturate Blacks & Black Soft Threshold

Saturate blacks is a modified (monochrome adapted) version the Power Retouche Black Definition. It is more complex than setting black point by stretching the histogram towards black since it also involves dynamic range compression. In effect it will darken or brighten the shades darker than Black Soft Threshold.

The Zone Controls

The Zones

Selecting the Zones controls-page will change the controlpanel to a page that gives you thre selectable zones (A,B and C) like the one shown here. The three zones are independent.

You select the eyedropper tool (click on the icon) to pick the zones main value in the preview window. When the zone is selected by clicking in the preview with the eyedropper, the eyedropper tool will revert to the hand, and a colored cross will be placed where you clicked.

Zone markers

3'rd party reviews

Photoshop User
jan/feb 2004

"While Photoshop provides a variety of ways to convert a color image to grayscale, this filter does a great job and provides the user with an incredible pat to creating a faux-infrared image. The plug-in emulates a variety of lens filters, black-and-white films, zone adjustments, and other options, making it one of the most versatile filters I've encountered. In addition Power Retouche offers 17 more filters, that solve some of the digital photographers most thorny problems." Jim Patterson - Review as pdf

Outback Photo

Please consult the review at Outback Photo here: http://www.outbackphoto.com/workflow/wf_29/essay.html

Photo credits

The japanese girl with the hat is from Fuji's information folder: Fuji Pro-Value, August 2001, vol. 6