An interesting way to process colour images

Cherhill Monument, Wiltshire, December 2007

As I work through the batch of shots for my Wiltshire series, I've been ruminating on whether I should present them in colour, black and white or a mixture. there are merits to each direction.

That's not the point I'm getting to here, however.

I worked up the image above as both a colour and black and white and discovered something interesting.

When I produce a black and white I always start from a finished or near-complete colour image. I find this gives me the best overall results. On this occasion I did the same: completed my colour work in Lightzone then completed the black and white. I then went back to convert to final TIFF output, starting with the black and white, then disabling the stack to convert the colour image.

The thing I found was that some of the local optimizations that I made in black and white also improved the colour, even though I hadn't thought to make the changes when working in colour. I think that maybe this has to do with working purely on tonal balance with the B&W, which is something that can get overlooked with colour. I think I might try this in future with colour images: apply a black and white conversion then check if there are local tonal adjustments required.

Here is the black and white version. I actually intend to hang a large print of this at home but I'm still undecided whether it is colour or black and white that belongs in the series.