Here's my process for the black and white, and I seem to be onto something because of the response I've gotten from this same process with some clients really liking it. Best part, it's really easy.
First, I work the image to where it looks "good" in black and white.
Second, I go back into camera raw and push the white slider out of my comfort zone to where it's starting to fall apart (blow out) and then back up to keep it bright but so that I'm not losing the detail in the highlights.
Third, I do the same with the black slider as I did the white watching for how much of the photo and at what point do I start to black out too much of the image and then back up enough to bring detail back into the whites.
Fourth, I now grab the contrast slider and push it up to where I like it.
I can't give you specific numbers of how much I push each because it depends on the highlights and darks in the photo. At first I wasn't too sure on the look - I liked it, but would clients.
I started doing this because of something that I read by or on Ansel Adams. It discussed, or he said, how whites need to be white and blacks need to be black to really make a BW come alive or otherwise you have just a bunch of shades of gray. Of course we're not getting rid of gray, but you get the idea.
Hope this helps.
Yes, that helps immensely, thank you... I'm going to play around with that right now just to see where it gets me.
Just to clarify, let me summarize and please correct me if I'm not understanding something.
Step 1. I assume you mean you sort of "wing it" at this stage a little, looking for a neutral starting point from which to start adjusting your Whites and Blacks.
Step 2. Max out the Whites slider then back off until there are no blown out pixels; tweaking by eye as necessary.
Step 3. Same as Step 2, only using the Blacks slider.
Step 4. Adjust the Contrast slider to taste.
Is that pretty much it, in the proverbial nutshell?
Edit: Now that I think about it, this is starting to ring a bell with me. I remember reading somewhere the suggestion to max out both the Hightlights and Blacks sliders in Adobe Camera RAW and then, using the two mid-tone sliders (called Shadows and Whites) and Contrast slider, tweak things to perfection.
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