Mid-Tone Contrast in B&W Portraits

As some of you may know I have been working on the refinement of the black and white conversion using the channel mixer. In this image we will be looking further into enhancing mid-tone contrast for increased clarity and sharpness. The image above is the before and after. Keep reading to learn the technique.


This is the original image straight out of my Canon EOS 5D using the famous 85mm F/1.2L Mk II lens. Even though it is quite slow the images has such clarity and feel that it is my favorite portrait lens. My son Iain was shot at f/11 1/160 at ISO50 using a single Alien Bee B800 with a medium 30x40 softbox camera left and a 2x4 white foamcore reflector camera right.


Next was the conversion to black and white. For skin tones the secret is the red channel. This setting enhances the contrast in the pinks of the skin for further definition. Be careful however since it can often reveal blemishes in the skin that are typically invisible to the naked eye. Play with it some and you will feel like you have X-Ray vision.


High-pass sharpening has become my standard practice over the last month or so. I like it because you can adjust your sharpness over the timeframe of the retouch because it is on it's own seperate overlay layer. Plus you can always run an unsharpen mask pass on it for even more sharpness.


This is my lightpainting/highlight compression pass. I felt the shin was losing some definition so I painted black on a 50% gray layer to bring down the highlights to further compress them to the midtone gray.


For me the shadow/highlight tool (image/adjustments/shadow/highlight...) is the most powerful image toning tool since the levels tool. I love the variety of looks you can get with it. Seen above is the advanced tool set. You really need to do a good bit of experimenting with every image to get the look you are searching for.


This is the image from above minus the shadow/highlight menu.


This is the final image with a film grain overlay and some minor leveles adjustments.


Here we have the final image with all the layers used. Not the highlight compression layer, and the midtone contrast layers... pretty cool.

You can also get involved in further online discussion concerning this image at Fred Miranda at this link: http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/633458/0.

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