Blueberry picking on Tuesday, and this little guy found one of his favorite things in the whole wide world!!! A duck!!! This child absolutely LOVES ducks! The twins have started blowing kisses, and intentionally showing affection with kisses, but I never expected him to do this!
Set my camera to auto ISO in the shade, and when it was a little too grainy, thought I'd try b&w on it. LOVE the b&w so much more than the color!
@frankhymus Thank you! I meant to tag you and ask for a critique! It's my first day home after being gone for 2 weeks, so I'm a little off kilter! Wondered what you thought of the b&w processing. I was able to finally figure out that a green filter helped define the duck away from the pig's leg. The contrast seemed good yet left his skin smooth. I added a faint white vignette which seemed to draw the eye in. The black vignette seemed to darken the shot too much. B&W added thru Silver Efex.
@shesnapped Many people swear by Silver Efex, especially now that all of Nik is free. I don't use it. The various color filters, all of them, and many more mixes, can be achieved by adjusting the gray scale mix, best on the HSL panel in Lightroom or in a Camera Raw filter from Photoshop. Photoshop's B&W adjustment layer doesn't have an "orange" or "purple" mix slider. Doing the conversion as a Camera Raw filter has the nice effect of keeping the RGB mode, so if you want to tone it with the Color Balance adjustment, which I do for almost all conversions, you save one trip to the Image | Mode menu. And you can get some interesting "toning" sometimes by blending in a little of the color background layer.
Another technique I use with PS that can do as much or more than with Nik is to duplicate the final background layer, and then in Blending Options, choose another Blending Mode, the Overlay/Soft Light group I find most useful, and adjusting the opacity for the blend you find most effective. Do this AFTER the B&W conversion and before any toning, since it's the tones and not the colors that you are enhancing.
Another technique I use with PS that can do as much or more than with Nik is to duplicate the final background layer, and then in Blending Options, choose another Blending Mode, the Overlay/Soft Light group I find most useful, and adjusting the opacity for the blend you find most effective. Do this AFTER the B&W conversion and before any toning, since it's the tones and not the colors that you are enhancing.