As you indicate, you can’t turn a lousy photo into a good one, but you can sometimes turn an otherwise mediocre one into something quite acceptablle with appropriate cropping and use of other tools in PhotoLab.
Mark
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Indeed. I used to modify standard palettes but found that they need to many changes and therefore started to create my own palettes.
Example: The tools that correct the flaws or compromises of the gear are spread over different palettes. Even though CA correction has to do with colour, it belongs into a “gear correction” palette imo, together with Distortion, Lens Sharpness etc.
I had sent @mikemyers workspace setting quite a while ago, with palettes for tools I use always/mostly/rarely, which allows me to collapse the “always” and “rarely” palette in order to have to scroll less…
But no matter how we use palettes, B&W can be done in several ways - as we can see in the many posts above.
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Aha!!! I still have them, but forgot from whom they came. You were the most likely person.
Back then, I was lost. Your palettes, and @Joanna’s palettes, helped, and eventually I started to feel I wasn’t lost in a maze. Now, even in the Advanced Workspace, I feel mostly at home. I even feel at home on my M10, and got fairly comfortable in my D750. I thought the YouTube video I posted from Ken Rockwell made me feel better about the D780 that will arrive tomorrow. With a week, I hope I feel comfortable with it too. I ordered a 24-120 lens for it too, since I no longer have the lenses I bought for my D750 - they’re now in India, or on their way there.
I need to concentrate on those parts of PL5 that I don’t really understand, such as how to change the color of my car from red to green. PhotoJoseph has videos on that, which I will watch again. …but before I switch gears, I want to continue creating images in B&W. I’m at a big disadvantage here, never having used any of those films in real life. I was mostly dealing with Panatomic X, Plus X, and Tri X, based on how much light I would have to work with. I’m now using the Fuji film simulation, mostly because @Joanna likes it but I never used the actual films back then. I guess I was a boring photographer back then, but I did create a nice collection of color filters. Gee, I have fond memories of my darkroom, but no desire to go back to the past. PL5 seems to give me anything I might need.
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I wonder if I will ever get my B&W conversion to where people here don’t suggest changes (probably never), but I took this photo an hour or two ago, did all the editing to make a color photo I liked, and then tried to get a B&W image I could accept. Again, Fuji B&W film, but from Film Pack, and far more cropping than I feel comfortable with. Next time I’ll use my 300, not my 135.
On the positive side, I don’t think I could have done this well with my old darkroom. On the negative side, I don’t like the lower part of the image, but when I crop it out, the image feels unbalanced.
It makes me feel like I’m 17 years old again, back when I was most serious about B&W. But, I wasn’t a good enough darkroom technician back then, to have even gotten a print like this. Then there’s the cruise ship - had it been a proper Ocean Liner, like what I grew up with, I would enjoy this photo much more. Oh well… The image I had in mind, was cropped much more tightly, but then I started trying different compositions, and ended up liking this one the most.
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@mikemyers, technically, the B&W conversion looks good imo.
I don’t specially like the tight crop and would go with more context.
The situation produces a compressed look and this will not change, no matter if you use 135mm or 300mm, but the latter will provide more pixels in the output image. BTW, your shot shows ISO 800 and 1/2000 s exposure time. Try lower ISO settings.
The lens part I was aware of, and I thought my 300mm Nikon lens would have been more appropriate. I’m still concentrating on learning my M10, for better or worse.
The composition - when I looked out my window, I envisioned what I posted, a close-up with the horizontal lines of the ship contrasting with the vertical lines of the buildings. That was the goal, and that’s what I created. The version you created is a better shot of “a cruise ship docked in Miami”, but it’s not at all what I was trying to create. For a photo to mail to my friends in India, your version is far better. But, it loses what I was attempting to show - for better or worse. I guess I had a one-track-mind.
Not sure what to say - I got what I wanted, but maybe I missed the “real” photo completely?
About the ISO, according to the people who seem to know the most in the Leica Forum, ISO on a Leica M10 ISO 5,000 is more like ISO 500 from the past. I was skeptical, but let me ask you this - did you write what you did because you saw the number 800, or because you looked at the image and thought the ISO was too high, judging by what the image shows? I’ve got a very open mind on this, still. They are telling me that ISO up in the thousands are fine. Very different from what I used to think. Maybe tonight I’ll take a night photo at ISO 5,000 or 10,000, and see what happens.
About the ISO settings: No matter what cameras we use, the potential for good image quality decreased with increasing ISO settings. Let’s have a look at this chart:
We can see how e.g. dynamic range changes depending on camera model and ISO value. My old Canon EOS 5D has fairly low DR compared to more modern cameras like yours. I shot 1000 ISO with the 5D a lot and the shots were quite usable - like the one you posted.
In low contrast situations, DR does not matter much, but other qualities suffer at higher ISOs too and it is therefore good practice to keep ISO as low as shooting conditions allow… Not as high as shooting conditions allow.
As for structure: I understood what you aimed at and while I posted a wider copy, you might still crop tighter to reduce the “ship and scrapers” notion in favor of an even more pronounced expression of structures.
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@mikemyers I guess I was a boring photographer back then,…
I wouldn’t say you were a boring old photographer. I used to use those three films. Panasonic X which I used to rate as much as 160 ASA, plus X as much as 250 ASA and Tri X at 3600 ASA with adjusted development times and diluted developer. I could never get on with the Ilford films although a photographic friend of mine had no problem. I could never get enough contrast in them.
Regardless of what is posted in the Leica forum, I agree with you, and there is no reason I couldn’t have changed the ISO to 200 or so. I’ll keep this in mind for next time. I wasn’t thinking clearly. There was no need for 800 ISO, at least this time.
I bought Plus-X film, 100 feet at a time, and loaded my own Contax or Nikon or Leica cassettes. I couldn’t afford color, and I just sort of standardized on what I had. I got to feel comfortable with Plus-X, for just about anything and everything. For contrast, I had several different boxes of printing paper, mostly 8x10, and in different contrast grades. Over time, I got better, but when I got to where I could afford color, I mostly switched over to Kodachrome or Ektachrome for slides, and I think standard Kodacolor (if that was the name) for print film. So, so long ago. So much easier, simpler, cleaner, and effortless with digital - but I did buy a Plustek scanner, and my film cameras are ready to go as soon as I am…
Gee, don’t go yet. Since you’ve come back from India you are now starting to take pictures for yourself and not for your magazines. I found your latest pictures to be very good in spite of some of the adverse comments. Especially the yacht in the impending storm. To me that told the story that you intended. I will probably be jumped on by a few people for these comments but I like what you’re doing. I take pictures for myself. If other people like them when they see them on my living room wall then all well and good. If they don’t like them, then hardluck. Sorry for my comments but I do like what you have recently done.
Thank you, and I like what I’m doing too, but I’m learning at the same time as “doing”, which is great. I love feedback, good or bad, especially when it’s constructive (such as the recent comment on ISO). Without @Joanna beating me over the head with a 2x4, I’d never have fully learned how to create photos like I did with film. Even then, I used what I had easy access to - I never learned the difference between different films.
I’m not going anywhere - I’ll be here for as long as others put up with me. I never “follow the masses”, and there’s a better chance of a volcano going off in Miami than the chance of my buying a new “mirrorless” camera. To me, it’s all a new idea camera makers found to not only get so many people to switch from their old cameras, but to also switch their old lenses.
PhotoLab used to be an impregnable puzzle to me, and when I did what I thought I was supposed to do, I (correctly) got yelled at. Eventually I got the hang of the basics, but it is SO difficult for me to understand WHY others are doing things I don’t understand. I usually love it when others re-edit my photos, sometimes showing me things I never thought of before. I also feel I need to post a photo that I created, even if others see it very differently. I’m trying to show what was in MY mind, but I’m aware that other people see it their way. Heck, read everything in this forum about editing with PhotoLab, and then read how Ken Rockwell creates HIS photos, shooting in Vivid and many adjustments at the maximum to get his photos to jump out of the page and clobber people’s minds with fully saturated color. I’d also like to be able to do this as effectively as I think he does, and I also want to do B&W, and also infrared, and so on… I’m sure @Joanna’s Nikon D850 is FAR better than my D750, but I couldn’t deal with the size and weight. I’ve got a huge desire to create photos with my Leica like what others did, and to also create images that are reasonably close to what @Joanna - and Helen - create. …but given the opportunity, I don’t know enough yet to do that, and probably never will. But I can come close (in my own opinion).
I should post some of my India photos here, but they aren’t “great” photos - they show what life is like in an Indian city, for ordinary people. But I don’t come here to show off - I come here to learn.
I feel the same way, but as a learning experience, nothing over the past several years has helped my photography as much as what I learned by participating here, not only “what” to do, but also “why”. 
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Another photo… while I was in Colorado, my good friend Susie took me all over to places that were so pretty or interesting, I had to try to capture them in an image. Not that it matters, but this was with my D750. Among other places she took me to a wooded area, with a stream, and the plan was for us to walk along the stream, capturing images along the way. The part of me that is concerned with self-preservation was screaming at me to stay where I was - I’m not as sure-footed as years ago, and I was thinking I’d probably fall or trip. So, Susie went on her own, and I stayed where I was, trying to think how I could get a photo of my surroundings.
I did, and it was pretty enough, with green trees, brown/tan surroundings, and the somewhat blue colored stream. I took a whole one photo as I remember, and I loved the scene.
It’s now months later, and I was looking for images I had taken that I could turn into B&W prints. After going through most of the things I’ve learned here in the past week or so, I did manage to convert this image to B&W, and by playing with films and filters and a gazillion other settings, I got a result I rather like. Unfortunately though, someone could ask me what the photo was of… and I wouldn’t have a proper answer. It was just a photo of a stream in the woods with trees and rocks and stuff all around, and even though I tried what I could to make it “pretty”, it didn’t have a “point”.
Then I clicked on the “Compare” button, and what I remembered as a beautiful color photo lost its charm to me. I hate to say it, but I like the B&W version more than the color version, and that’s only after selecting the film type @Joanna mentions so often, and playing with contrast and filters and other tools to make it stand out brilliantly. Before I did any of that editing, it was not a very exciting photo. Now I love it.
I’ll post it here for all to see, and comment. I honestly can’t say I like it because of the subject matter, or because of following all the ideas here to make it stand out. I guess I like it because of the technique, not the photo. Maybe.
If I over-did things, or under-did things, or if I could have done something more, please let me know. The only thing I do know for sure, is a lifetime ago when I was doing this stuff in a real darkroom, I didn’t know enough to have created a print that looks like this.
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This is a scene that I would class as an “almost” image, which instantly made me want to see if I could improve it 
Let me start by going back to the colour version.
First, I reframed it to 5x7 proportions and placed the tree on the right on the edge of the frame, in order to provide a “terminator” to redirect the eye back into the rest of the image. The river leading the eye from the bottom left corner towards the tree.
Then I used the Fuji Velvia 100 film emulation - a saturated but neutral colour film that gives the image a bit of warmth…
Now to a B&W version.
I noticed that you had used the “Cool Tone” filter, which actually does very little in terms of tonal separation.
For some reason, you also used the Smart Lighting tool in Spot Weighted mode but only selected the sky, which wasn’t particularly bright. This also caused the contrast on the brighter rocks to drop, thus requiring the adding back of more contrast with the overall contrast slider.
You used the overall contrast slider, which can be a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut, as they say; and you used unnecessary microcontrast as well as just fine contrast.
Here is my version, which you may love or hate…
I used a red filter, which better separated out the tones of the rocks and the river.
I removed the smart lighting and created a more complex tone curve to introduce contrast into he brighter rocks and the darker river but not into the mid-tones.
I zeroed both the overall contrast and microcontrast sliders and lifted the fine contrast one instead.
Anyhoo, see what you think.
The DOP file now contains your version (M), an untouched original (for comparison)(1), the Velvia 100 colour version (2), my B&W version (3)
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Just for exercise’s sake and minimal number of tools used:
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Hint: Use the Luminance slider of the HSL Tool and see what it does to the image, depending on which colour channel you select.
A very interesting comparison of “non-FilmPack” techniques
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I’m not sure what an “almost image” is, but my gut feeling is that applies perfectly here. I didn’t try to edit it in color, as I’m currently more fascinated in trying to create acceptable B&W images. Let’s see, to reply to what you wrote:
I know you made it into 5x7 proportions - I’ve lately been ignoring proportions, and just trying for a good image regardless of whether the image would be a “standard size”.
I love what you did to use the tree as a “terminator” at the top right. I endlessly changed the edges of the image at the right and bottom. I never even thought to find something that would do it a naturally as the tree. I’ll remember this for the future.
Fuji Velvia 100… I know nothing about these films, other than the Kodak films I used to buy and use. For you, you can use something you think is appropriate. For me, I’ll need to click on the top film, and work my way down until I find my favorite. What you selected is very effective, the photo in color has a nice tone. I think I’d like the green to be more intense, but the way you did it my eye bounces all over, but always ends up in the stream.
Something you did is very different than what I was thinking - I didn’t know where to put the bottom edge of the image, and I thought the huge rocks were getting too much attention, so I cropped it tighter. I don’t know how many times I went back and forth with this. When I see your version, there is a nice “heavy” area at the bottom of the image that supports the whole image.
I did use the Smart Lighting tool sort of correctly, but I think the area I selected as “dark” got cut off when I trimmed the bottom of the image. From now on, I’ll double check for this kind of mistake. And you’re right, the sky isn’t the brightest part of the image. Two mistakes.
“Cool Tone” filter - I tried several, one after another, and that’s the one I preferred.
Contrast - in B&W, this is the biggest difference between our end results - I kept adding more contrast until the very dark areas got as dark as I wanted them to be, for the image to be more like what Ansel Adams did with lots of “black”. Your version looks more natural. My version is exactly what I wanted, but maybe I went too far?
Microcontrast - I double clicked on it, which I assumed would take it back to zero. Somehow it changed, and I never went back at the end to verify it was still zero. I’ve learned from you and others that it’s the “fine contrast” tool that makes edges sharper, which I wanted.
My version looks like the best I was able to do, with dark blacks and lots of contrast, and the bottom trimmed more to keep the eye in the stream. When I finished, I couldn’t see anything else I wanted to change, and the end result I’d be happy to frame and put up on my wall, more so than most images I edit. But, when I look at your version, it certainly looks more “natural”. I like the tree to make a good “edge” for the photo, I still think the rocks are too prominent, but your over-all end result looks more “real”.
Looking at both versions, side by side, the single biggest difference in them is whatever you did to make the trees look so good. I have a blackish area from all the leaves, but in your version I feel like I can see every individual leaf. I far prefer the trees in your version. Is this because of the film or the filter you picked?
I’ll try this later today. I’ve never used this tool until now. The water in the image at the right actually looks BLUE, which is nice. I didn’t know how to do that, but I was mostly concentrating on the B&W image.
Now that I think about it, it seems obvious that this would be a huge help. I’ve ignored that part of PhotoLab, as I’m so busy with other tools. Uh-oh, this tool could be dangerous… But if the water is a reflection of the sky, won’t I need to make the same change in the sky?
I’m just waking up - breakfast is next on my list, but I will try this out so I know what it can do.
By adjusting the ‘Luminance’ of a channel you will change all tones of that channel so by adjusting the blue channel you will adjust both the sky and the water and indeed anything else ‘blue’.
A trick learned from my LF work where composition in camera is so important.
Once again, learned from LF landscape work where we have a tendency to “ground” an image and give it more depth by creating a deeper perspective front to back.
Sort of. From my experience, there really wasn’t any need because the dynamic range wasn’t really large enough to need it. I was able to manage it with the tone curve.
Ask yourself - what effect on tonality does putting a pale blue filter have in front of yellow, orange, green and green?
- it darkens anything yellow, orange or green
- it lightens anything blue
So, it brightens the sky, which you wanted to darken and darkens all the rocks and leaves, thus reducing their contrast from each other.
I used red because it darkens the sky and water (blue) as well as the green foliage.
There are different “schools” of B&W - some teach “soot and whitewash”, whilst I prefer to have more detail throughout with plenty of detail, created by fine contrast - more naturalistic. I believe the former is a result of not being able to do stuff like fine contrast without resorting to a lot of dodging and burning under an enlarger with multigrade paper and a filter pack. But these things are personal.
One major problem with dark blacks is the tendency to lose detail…
Notice the dark jacket retains texture.
This is mainly down to using the red filter to darken them and fine contrast to bring out the detail.