13 Sep 16. Something different for B&W Tuesday in that I'm sharing the original color version and then 4 B&W varieties of that color shot. All of the info for Monday's submission applies to this shot, as they were shot at the same time in the same location, obviously. There are many ways to create a B&W from a color shot, and while I could go into detail on all of them, I won't. Instead, I'll briefly discuss just for approaches, all of which I employ at one time or another. Taking the color image into a graphics editor, I first make a gradient map and modify that with a levels adjustment as necessary to get my best starting color shot. That also provides me with the first B&W version. In the B&W image with the 4 identical photos it is the one in the ULH corner. I seldom ever share this version. After making all the color version of each image, I make a final version that is always B&W. Ninety five per cent of the time I use Topaz's BW Effects 2, with the remaining 5% shared by either nik's Silver Efex or a Digital Zone System program written by Blake Rudis, a colleague. I have placed the four B&W versions side by side for your comparison. No two programs handle the info identically, so I have endeavored to get all four shots as close to one another as possible. That said, they all work differently so you get different results. You can of course use the three italicized programs to create a huge variety of B&W "looks." When I asked Jan to look at the set of four and rank them as to her favorite to least favorite, she amazingly ranked them in the same order as did I. You can look them over and see which result you prefer. The color shot will give you an idea as to how each program handled the color. If any of these programs are of interest, you can find them on the web. The ability to create a gradient map lies with your graphics editor and thus is at no extra cost; nik's suite of programs used to run roughly $400 but are now free to download but I don't know for how much longer. Topaz sell BW Effects 2 for $60 but you can get a 30 free trial and f /64 sells Black, White, & Beyond, the most powerful of all these programs, for $97. While there are many other B&W programs, these are the one's with which I'm familiar.
The base image was given a bit of contrast adjustment, and then used as the base image to create the 4 B&W images. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 640; 1/125 @ f / 8.