Black-and-White Conversion using Photolab 8

Black-and-White Conversion using Photolab 8 .

I have been lucky enough to have been provided complimentary copies of Photolab 8 and Nik Collection 7 by DxO. I am also fortunate because they have not set any ground rules about how I use the packages, nor do I have to use them exclusively. They’re just happy for me to share my honest opinions – good or bad – as an amateur photographer.

So thank you DxO for the great software.

Of course, having the Nik Collection means I have arguably one of the best black-and-white conversion packages available – Nik Silver Efex.

But a few days ago, I thought—what if I didn’t have Silver Efex and had to rely solely on Photolab 8 for my black-and-white conversions? How would things work out for me?

So for this story, I am going to pretend that I don’t have Nik Silver Efex and that I have only DxO Photolab 8 to convert my photos to black and white.

There are at least four ways to achieve black-and-white conversion in DxO Photolab :

1. Reduce the saturation to zero
2. Use one of the black-and-white presets built into Photolab
3. Apply a black-and-white LUT to the image
4. Change the color rendering to black-and-white

So before I get started let me just remind you of a photographic philosophy I identify with.

There is no right or wrong outcome when converting photographs to black and white because photography in general is subjective, not objective. So, the images here are my black-and-white takes on the original color images. Some conform to the “rules” of photography; some don’t.

Most of these images I like; some I’m not sure about; and others I don’t really like at all.

So here we go…black-and-white conversion using DxO Photolab 8.

1. Reduce the saturation to zero

At first glance reducing the color saturation to zero seems to be the quickest, easiest way to turn a color image into a black and white image.

Unfortunately, all this does in most cases is turn the image into a wishy-washy grey scale image because removing the color this way does not take into account the varying levels of brightness and contrast throughout the image.

All is not lost however, because once the image is converted to grayscale you can then use Photolab’s customize options to tweak the image the way you want it to look.

The Tone Curve and Contrast controls are super helpful at this stage, but you can also use all the controls in the Light panel to get the perfect look.

The Channel Mixer is also useful for fine-tuning, although in my opinion, the ranges of adjustment can be limiting.

In fact – if you want to be off the wall a bit – you can even invert the Luminance tone curve to achieve a negative effect as shown above.

2. Use a black-and-white preset

Can you get a perfect black-and-white conversion with just a couple of mouse clicks?

Try it with DxO’s presets.

Open your image to be converted in the Customize panel in Photolab, and in the top right-hand corner click on the Presets button. Scroll down to option 2 – Black & White where there are 8 looks to choose from.

Left-click once on a black-and-white look that suits your image, the change is instant. If you don’t like the look you have selected, just go back to the Presets panel and choose another look.

A point worth noting is that if you make any changes to your image before the conversion, applying a preset will overwrite your initial settings. You can however make adjustments to the look after applying the preset.

3. Use a LUT to create a black-and-white image

This method only works if you have DxO Photolab 8 Elite as the Essential version doesn’t support LUTs.

Not only can you use any of the built-in black-and-white LUTs, but you can also download others from the ‘net. First up, make sure you have the premium LUTs from DxO installed, and another good place to go for B&W LUTs is the On1 website.

LUTs can be found inside the Color panel – and the Color Space must be set to DxO Wide Gamut for this to work.

As with using a preset, the image settings can be changed after applying the LUT.

4. Change the Color Rendering to B&W

Like the LUTs option, Color Rendering also can be found in the Color panel in Customize.

Choose the Black & White rendering option, then in the drop-down option field below you can choose from 4 Generic renderings or 3 Film renderings. With Film Pack installed the film options increase markedly.

Again, you can use the many DxO controls to adjust the image to suit the look you are after.

My conclusions..

My conclusions are simple – in the absence of any other specialist black-and-white conversion software you can do a good job using only DxO Photolab

There are some limitations though.

There is no way to apply creative vignetting inside Photolab. To do this you would need either Silver Efex or DxO’s Film Pack add-on.

I have tried to create a vignette on the image below using a combination of control points, inverted control points and negative control points, but without a great deal of success.

Control points also allow you to dodge and burn various parts of the image allowing greater creative flexibility, as in bringing some detail back into the tyre and rear window areas of the truck on the right hand side above – and in a couple of other places too.

Nor does Photolab allow you to add borders. Again this is possible using Film Pack (which incidentally I think is awesome – give the trial version a run) – and of course with Silver Efex.

So there you have it. My take on black-and-white conversions using DxO Photolab 8.

Thank you for dropping to read it – and I hope it made sense.

And remember – there is no right and there is no wrong.