Colour or B&W ?

[Rose]

I took this pic of some Goan fishermen on holiday last week. I've processed it in colour and B&W and can't decide which is best ?

Critique please
Many thanks

Boat-boys-v2-web.jpg (148.7 KiB) Viewed 4955 times

Boat-boys-(B&W2)-web.jpg (150.52 KiB) Viewed 4955 times

[davidc]

Probably B&W I think. At least that was my first reaction, I'll have another look tomorrow with fresh eyes

[Mike Farley]

Of the two you have posted, I would say colour as the mono version looks a bit flat.

If it were mine, I would push the contrast harder, which is possible as mono is only subject to luminance and you do not have to worry about hue and saturation. The attached is the colour image put through Silver Efex Pro 2 to give you an idea of how I would approach it. It's not perfect, just a quick conversion to show the possibilities.

[davidc]

Have you sharpened that? It looks like it's been oversharpened with visible haloing. Though maybe it's just the contrast boosting that's generated a similar looking result?

[Mike Farley]

Have you sharpened that? It looks like it's been oversharpened with visible haloing. Though maybe it's just the contrast boosting that's generated a similar looking result?

No sharpening, I only applied the SEP2 High Structure (Harsh) preset, which I think acts on mid-tone contrast which is where much of the detail information for an image is controlled. Assuming Rose had already sharpened her image, this could account for the effect.

As I said, it is all a bit rough and ready, and working on a small, previously processed JPEG is not an ideal starting point. I simply wanted to give Rose an idea of what is possible by bringing out the tones and textures in the image.

[Rose]

Thanks Mike - I was a bit wary actually of pushing the contrast too much for fear of losing the reality of the image, but I think you've shown that there is scope for a bit more.