September 2, 2022

Selenium toning was an important part of the darkroom that nearly every photographer had used. It also translates well to digital and that’s what I’ll show you today. It’s great because it’s easy to make understated. So I created it as part of Emulsion 4, next to Platinum, Wet, and Cyanotype.

Even if you don’t use my Emulsion actions you can recreate this yourself using tone layers. First let’s talk about you should discover this magical chemical. I’ll add a bonus Emulsion 4 video at the bottom of this post to show more about how I’m doing these advanced tones that shift with tone value as they did in the darkroom.

The magical Selenium chemical on digital…

For topdays examples I used Emulsion 4 actions. You can get Emulsion 4 actions here. This look also works well with the borders and textures of Naked Darkroom.

Selenium was one of the most popular chemical baths for a darkroom. But it’s little known to the digital world.

Unlike early-era processes, such as Collodion Wet Plate or Platinum. Darkroom Selenium toning is a little more subtle. Of course, you can push it harder. But in a low state, it tends to make black-and-white photos seem more black-and-white with a natural coolness that feels less like an effect and like like a perfect print.

When to use Selenium on digital

In Selenium Toning you bathe a black and white print in a Selenium bath after the main print is made to balance color casts and make it richer. A chemical print often has a slight cast depending on how it’s processed. That’s often balanced out with Selenium.

Yes, we can use true neutral monochrome prints on digital prints. But adding light selenium can actually make your digital prints feel more like a darkroom print because it’s such a classic look from the darkroom.

Selenium works great in artsy kind of projects as well as in classic clean black and white prints. This is a mild application with a slight warm shift selected from the options in the Emulsion 4 easy layer stack.

Make your own selenium look.

My Emulsion actions make an easy-to-mix layer stack that makes it easy, But you can make your own too. Study what color tones you want to use like I did in my actions and use a tone-limited layer or a gradient map so you are getting a gradual application of color tints that changes acres your tonal range like it did in the darkroom.

Bear in mind that the color grading tools of a raw processor like Lightroom can get this general look. I included a Selenium tone for example in my Silver 5 presets. But what I’m showing you here with layers in Photoshop gives a more refined and rich result.

I’ll show you various examples here of harder and softer applications of selenium toning on digital files. Don’t be afraid to add your tones AFTER you add the border, as I did above in the bird’s photo. Since we print on pure white paper most of the time, this can add a more authentic, classic feel to the final image as in the darkroom bath the entire paper is involved.

Here I pushed harder in the master tint, with the Gold Bath option is added to simulate adding real gold to the process in the darkroom.

These photos can be silent or bold depending on you!

What’s cool is that the tone from it can be so light that it may not even be seen as a color effect, like in the photo below. You know it’s there only because it’s side by side. Selenium can be used as a color effect, or as a simple final process like this that still feels like a monochrome process.

Cooler, warmer, neutral. It’s all there with Selenium.

The top image seems slightly toned, but it is monochrome. The bottom is a light application of Selenium tone from Emulsion 4 emulating around a 1:20 bath ratio. The slight natural blue almost makes it feel more like a true B&W.
Surgery room, Mexico. The warmer selenium 1:5 option provides a more noticeable tint without being overpowering. You can see here I added the tint after the border was applied from Naked Darkroom

It can make your black and white feel more real.

Some darkroom photographers use Selenium on every print as aside from its toning benefits it gives longevity to the print when used in the darkroom. It’s common in the darkroom, so when you see a Selenium black and white print, it might feel more like a real black and white because for many years it’s been a staple in the finishing process.

At a glance, the bath in Emulsion 4 may just seem like a light blue tone. In reality, it goes much deeper. That’s why I thought it deserved its own post here. I wanted to show why the Selenium bath is so useful to improve your black-and-white photography.

The same photo from the Surgery but with a classic process that does not warm. It’s just there and you don’t really think about why.

How I do Selenium tone edits with Emulsion like I show in the video.

The ability to print a true monochrome from a digital file is great. It can also be a little sterile. So when I had users of my products asking about Selenium Toning in Emulsion, I did my research to get it right for Version 4. It’s a process that changes based on the type of bath, and the ratio, and that has options often used in the darkroom like mixing the Selenium with other chemicals to get different hues and looks.

Selenium affects the shadows first and less in the highlights but these things can vary depending on how you process the print. So in Emulsion 4, I tried to stay true to that. The ability to quickly alter settings of the Selenium digital effect allows us to replicate that look and adjust it as low or high as we need using the master tinting tool in Emulsion 4 actions.

Here I used the 1:5% ratio mod. You see this brings tones more into highlights as it represents a stronger bath. I added a natural border from the Naked Darkroom texture to finish the presentation.
A light clean bath in this portrait with the main tone layer at about 40% and the paper softness option turned up a little giving a natural Selenium tone that still feels black and white. Many love Selenium for this reason.

Selenium toning can also be a tinting effect in its own right.

Selenium is also popular in adding contrast. In EMuslion 4 actions you can even add a tone thinner which adds contrast and pushed highlights more as we get in a darkroom.

The layers in the main Selenium effect of Emulsion 4

Using the tone tool can quickly adjust the layers to like in other effects make the Selenium process lighter or heavier, emulating darkroom mixes and times. Paper softness lets me emulate a more matte vs contrasty process to infer an older paper.

I can also run the texture action to get paper-type looks. Of course, I can disable these for a more neutral print and retain a pure tone if I want to use a specific digital pepper for a certain look.

At times Selenium effects can be almost imperceptible, only used for the smallest tone or to add contrast while maintaining a pure black-and-white feel. Like in the darkroom, you can push in up or down using the options and mods in Emilsuon 3 and quickly get anything from a tiny adjustment to a bold Selenium that’s bluer or even mixed with other hues that replicate for example a stronger ratio or even gold mixed with the print during the process.

Don’t skip the toning that most people don’t even know is there.

Another light process of the base tone. It just looks black and white but the natural cool tone brings out the contrast.

As always the goal of Emulsion 4 actions is not to forget about the rich darkroom processes but to learn from them in how we create digital prints and images and honor the legacy that we have from the darkroom.

I hope you enjoy the new Selenium process and please let me know if you think it’s lacking in any way. Like all the looks in Emulsion from Platinum to Wet plate, I am always improving the tool. There’s a good article on Darkroom selenium tone prints and some of their variations here.

However you apply selenium whether it’s the slightest touch or a heavier warm tone, I think you’ll find this addiction to be not only authentic but very versatile for our black-and-white photography.

Keep making stuff and here’s another video of how I use Emulsion 4 to get various platinum and darkroom chemical looks. You can get my Emulsion pack here for Photoshop.

Gavin Seim

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August 12, 2022

Should you use Capture One or Lightroom for your black and white edits? PLUS where does Photoshop for black and white fit in?

We’re going to test that in today’s video with direct comparisons. Taking the sale filed and editing them in each to see what gives us the best black and white in the least time. I’ll give you tips for all of them along the way.

Also, see my Lightroom vs Capture on 2022 video here for a general overview of these two great apps. For now, let’s watch today’s video and do some black and white tests.

Since I started digital photography 20 years I’ve seen just about every technique for Black and White in digital Some needless complex. some are just ugly. Simplifying that process led me to bypass plugins and create tools Like Silver 4 presets and Blackroom BW Actions.

Pure Capture One. While there are fewer BW sliders, you can make up for it with the more advanced color tools and get a stunning result.

Honestly we B&W lovers occasionally get a little snobby, so this question can be complex. But since we no longer have the chemicals we used to use in the darkroom the traditional color filters do not have the same effect. Today to take the same principle and make it work digital.

The best black and white conversions usually start for a color photo because with those color channels we can convert and extract the colors, much like we did with filters in the film days but with more detail. Darkroom like green filter, lighter reds, etc. If you bake black and white in camera, you lose all that power. That’s not to say your BW photos are wrong. Just that they are not as flexible.

So I usually convert on the raw file. In LR or C1. I use my SIlver 4 presets if Filmist. But whether you use creative presets to go further, or all manual. You don’t want to supply desaturate. Use those channels and the power of your RAW.

Watch today’s video above, because we’re looking at Lightroom VS Capture ON in a side-by-side level. Does one give you a better black and white conversion than the other and what are the advantages between Lightroom and C1.

After that, you can go deeper into your black and white edits..

If I’m going to edit my best work. I go beyond RAW. I’ll restore the color channels before going into Photoshop, leaving my other edits in place. Then I can go deeper with my black and white edits. But they are also more complex in Photoshop.

Sometimes it’s not even clear how you can make a better black and white in Photoshop. I use Blackroom to convert to a more complex BW because it always helps me find a way to improve the edit without stumbling around. That’s what it was built for.

More about how I do those more advanced edits in this video and on the Blackroom page.

Lightroom is a little more user-friendly compares to Capture One. But with Styles or presets, you can get your look fast in both.

In conclusion. Which is best? LR, C1 or PS

When it comes to Lightroom VS Capture One for black and white. I think Lightroom has the edge for ease of use and results that just work. Capture One with its other available tools can perhaps give you more options but with more work. Both are going to work great if you save presets or styles or Have a pack like Silver 4 or Filmsist on hand.

In the end, both are good and the results will be good.

But comparing both to Photoshop. Photoshop offers more options, but with a lot more time spent. Even if you use Photoshop actions to vastly speed up these more advanced edits, Photoshop should probably not be where you start.

Edit normally in Lightroom or in Capture one or another RAW-type editor. Then take the very best images you want to showcase to Photoshop to give them that edge that makes them win.

Lastly, plugins for black and white are heavily hyped. I used them when I all this starting out but native tools have improved a LOT since those days. As I mentioned in the video, a plugin adds another step and takes away control.

Yes, using presets and styles and actions help a lot because they make hard tasks fast. But they use the native app tools in Lightroom, Capture One, and Photoshop. So instead of a new file or a flat image. You just highly refined sliders, adjustable layers, and a totally transparent process. To be that’s a huger win.

Let me know if the comments what you think is the best black and white tool.

Gavin Seim

The detail in Photoshop is almost impossible to beat. Layers and details equal more refinement. So I still take by best photos here in the end after using a RAW style editor.
Don’t be afraid to edit your black and white a little more. Whatever app you use. In the end, it’s all about shadow and contrast.
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April 20, 2022

I wanted a more perfect Portra film preset for Lightroom and Capture One. So I made it!

Portra is a classic film, the 160 leans a touch green and is very versatile. The 400 is warmer and probably the top portrait film ever and the 800 is less famous but has a bit more color pop and a rich look.

Portra gen.2 took the Portra presets that have always been part of my Filmist presets and made them so much better. I tinkered and calibrated for days to get the feel of Portra just right. It took a lot of film research and formulation but the result was worth the wait.

You can Get Filmist here –  The free pack has my new Portra 160 preset. Here’s my new video on the new Portra looks.

In making gen2 Portra I had to make all 3 presets from the ground up for Lightroom and then do it again for the Capture One Styles. But the result is a film emulation of Portra better than any I have ever used. It captures the aesthetic of Portra and just looks stunning. Watch the video and I’ll show you how it works.

Porta looks amazing on Portraits but also on a lot of other things.

Filmist is a lot of film emulsion presets, but the gen.2 Portra looks along with new gen.2 Natura 1600 which I recently finished developing brings in two of the most versatile films ever as digital presets for Lightroom and Capture 1 and LUT. I’m using these constantly in my workflow. Even if you only grab the free one I included in my Filmist free sampler pack, I hope you enjoy it.

Gavin Seim

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January 11, 2022

 

The Fuji worm invasion came after the film! In today’s video, I’ll show you how to fix it.

Fixing fuji worms LIghtroom vs Capture One

I want to tell you a story as we continue the LR vs C1 experiments because today I going to show more important ways to control details like the wormy artifacts sometimes caused by ISO noise.

I was starting photography in the late 90’s when I saved up for a Canon EOS 3. Oh I thought I was the coolest ever (hint, I was not)

I devoured the magazines. In those days we talked about fine-grain films like the new Portra 400, but words like worms and color noise were not topics. 1600 ISO was about the limit and it was noisy. Take it or leave it!

These days I’ll sit for hours and tinker with a formula for presets like Natural HDR 4 to get the best detail and tone from our files. Photographers that use presets actions and tools get better results. Because they see more without working harder.

35mm film was like having 10-20 megapixels.

This was me in the early 2000’s with my prized EOS 3.

Serious pros of the day said 35mm was not enough. Strangely they downgraded a few years later to the 6MP generation of digital SLR’s.

No matter. My EOS 3 cost $1000 without a lens and I used it for years, starting out my portrait and wedding work and being the official photographer at the local speedway. It had eye control focus, meaning it focused where you looked in the viewfinder. It did not detect the subject’s eyes like today’s cameras. It was just cool and it worked, some of the time.

Each Saturday I would go early to the speedway and pre-sell photos for 15 bucks. Then I would sit all night in the center field taking photos, playing with pans, and getting dusty. On Monday I developed 6-10 rolls of film, sort 4×6 prints, store the negatives and give the prints to my racers, hoping to profit about $200

That 35mm film with it’s noisy ISO 800 grain was what I had and I made it work and I learned a lot in that dusty center field.

But noisy was relative and more organic then. It was silver. These films were classic and looked beautiful. The formulas I’ve created in Filmist presets are more high-res than we had then, but they look great because they look like film.

PS: Download my FREE Filmist pack to get my noise presets and the film looks if you missed it. You’ll see what I mean about film color and detail.

Download Filmist mini here to get my free noise formula preset.

Today I think about the hurdles we had to get a good print and how many stages of noise and artifacts and dust and scratches could be introduced.

Today we pixel peep and panic over a little blip in a sensor or a little noise that as I showed in last weeks video is easy to clean up with good use of detail and grain tools

Watch my worms video and learn how to control detail.

I love doing testing. It’s experimenting like in this week’s video that help us understand more. It’s that hunt that results is tools like my presets and like Emulsion 3 and Lumist for Photoshop.

So this week I uploaded another video looking at more grain and noise. It’s a focus on Fuji files, but also another look at LR vs C1 and how it will handle noise regardless of what camera your worms and artifacts come from.

 

That’s all for this week. I’m hitting the streets looking for light like I found here and processed with Filmist. Come Monday I’ll be back to my experiments, working on formulas and ideas for next week’s email.

See you then, Gavin Seim

Fuji X100V ISO 800, Filmist process and Gavs detail preset

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June 4, 2020

Last week I was working on the 1.2 update for our Filmist emulsion presets. We develop these for Lightroom Capture 1 and LUT. I needed some fresh test image so I took my model Sondra out for a quick natural light shoot on these quiet side street in central Mexico.

The soft light seems a bit flat but there’s direction to it and it’s perfect for portraits. The quiet greens made for a sublime contrast to the dress and the sunset light was filtered like a giant softbox. Then we started editing with FIlmist. No need to lose ourselves in over saturation. There’s a reason film color was refined for over 100 years.

I’ll with just some color grades and then do more detailed finish work on my top favorites. This first one is just the new 160V Pushed presets which gives a nice poppy push to the RAW file with this really soft light. We want to bring out the shape of the light. The reason good presets are so powerful is not because you can’t edit sliders manually. It’s because you cab quickly browse looks that are close and get the one that really fits the image you’re working on. You get to see things you would never see if you editing everything manually.

I start with the RAW file color grade. If it’s a 5 star image that I will edit in PS, I will take off the grain until after my final edit and then add it back to keep the image surface clean and free of artifacts. This one is just a preset and is now ready for some quick detail work in PS.

Ok lets go…

Shoot Notes:

  • Location; Querétaro mexico, May 2020
  • Time: Sunset, around 7PM, partly overcast
  • Gear: Fuji XT3 – 50mm f2 lens

Edited with: Filmist presets, Alchemist Actions, Lumist Actions and Sharpist Actions.
Get 20% off any of these with code: BlogFreinds

 

The key with great color in a portrait is to separate the object. To make your  subject pop and have that 3D feel. It’s starts with light but the way we mix colors is huge. That’s why it used to be so important to choose the right film, today we can do that with color grading or tools like  Filmist which are my go to because they give me the right mix.

After the presets I went into PS for quick skin and sharpness detail using Alchemist retouching actions and last but now least SHARPist actions to give it that final zing. Here’s the finished shots and I’ll mark the film look I used on each one of these.

It’s worth noting that while I speak of the tools I use to save me time, all these things can be done manually. Using color sliders to control the mix and get a filmic look, using frequency separation for gentle smoothing, eyes bags and more,. Using sharping for that final pop. These are all tools we have in nearly every photo editor. It’s just a question of how you apply them.

The anatomy of an edit. We started with a nice soft Raw out of camera, then use the Color Pro 400p preset for a nice filmic color grade. Then I spend 5 minutes in Photos. I used Alchemist for a very subtle frequency separation skin retouch, the eye bag brush to quickly soften the eyes, the Alchemy eyes brush to make them pop and finished with a bit of burn and dodge and the Rocket Sharp action from Sharpist. Boom, bang, boom.

 

These are just fun shots and I don’t even need Photoshop. This super warm sunset light looks great but I don’t want top over saturate so I’m using a nice soft Concept film like 400 ES that keeps the color soft.

 

After the presets I did a little work Alchemist using tools like the eye bag brush and then a sharpening using Sharpist. Not too much, just a little final clean up.

 

The final edit

 

Full length for the legs for days look. I mixed presets for a soft color blend and then spent a few minutes without Lumist as tone control is key in longer shots.

 

Used PolaColor S here and the light dark sharp from Sharpist actions to make her pop. That’s all.

 

These are B type shots that are great for Instagram. Sometimes I’ll just to a color grade and leave it at that. No Photoshop or extra retouching needed.

 

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