The Weekly Color, B&W Photo Edit Challenge

http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/a/a/c/9/600_440863721.jpeg

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/a/d/2/b/600_440864331.jpeg

So what is an Edit Challenge?

An Edit Challenge is an educational opportunity to try your hand at editing photos. At first you may not feel confident in your ability to edit and improve and enhance photos. That's OK, you can view the posted images and learn what other photographers did to achieve the finished result. Once you've seen how others are editing their photos, you can join the fun and try your hand at it too!

How do I get started?

Every Monday a photo will be uploaded that you can edit and convert into a B&W image. The upload format will usually be Canon Raw (CR2 or CRW), but may occasionally be a TIFF or JPEG or other Raw such as a Nikon NEF or Adobe DNG.

Do Not worry that you do not have a Canon or Nikon camera. The Adobe software has all the proper editors built in and no additional software is needed. The link to the files is here.

What type of photos will I edit?

The type of photo will vary from candid, portrait, wildlife, landscape, documentary etc. You'll have 7 days to edit the file any way you want.

What is a B&W Conversion?

In the film era it was easy to produce B&W photos. All you needed to do was purchase B&W film, shoot it and then have it processed. Voilà, B&W photos!

Now in the digital era it's different. You can set your camera to shoot B&W JPEGs (monochrome setting in the menu) and make minor adjustments in camera. However, JPEG images are not the best files to do further editing on in programs like Lightroom or Photoshop.

Another method is to shoot Raw files and convert them to B&W in software like Lightroom or Photoshop. This conversion method generally produces high quality B&W images, but requires a more complex skill set. The conversion method is what this Edit Challenge is all about.

So how is this educational?

You should also post in the comments section the software and plugins used. You should also list the steps you went through to achieve your final result. You do not need to list exact settings, just the tools used.

The posting of your settings will help others learn how to achieve similar results. This will help all those that participate learn different editing styles and techniques.

An example of correct edit list might look something like this:

cropped file

straightened image

adjusted the white balance so the scene wasn't too blue

adjusted levels to lighten sky and foreground

cloned out dust and garbage in scene

brought into layers and selectively sharpened the subjects

applied noise reduction to the image

or you might include the History from the History Panel in Lightrrom, Photoshop or Photoshop Elements like this:

http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/3/5/4/event_162240852.jpeg

There is no limit on the types of editing, techniques used, software used, plugins used, elements added or removed from the image. This is a free for all, so dust off the keyboard and mouse and show us your best stuff.

http://photos3.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/a/d/4/d/600_440864365.jpeg

http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/a/d/5/d/600_440864381.jpeg