Monochrome on GF1

That's what happens when you shoot in RAW. The RAW developer redevelops the image. The only way would probably be to shoot in JPG (from my experience).

 

I can't comment from experience with Aperture, however other photo editing software that I use enables recreation of black and white by desaturating the image (-100%) and then using channel mixer to adjust the three colour channels. Try and make the three channels sum to +100%, thus for example red +120%, green +50%, blue -70%, grand total +100%.
There are other ways, in Photoshop I used to use gradients for which I built a range of preset ones.
These techniques give a fine range of adjustments for black and white effects, I hope this gives you a starting point for exploring, all is not lost by any means.

Barrie

 

Hi Owen, unfortunately I don't think you'll perfectly recreate the GF1 monochrome setting from raw... you get lots of control in most raw converters, but you have to become expert to copy one look to another.

Cheers

Brian

 

If your using aperture 3 it has quite a lot of b&w conversion possibilities - I would try out the quick ones on the adjustment HUD first then fine tune it from there

 

Owen, you can just use Jpeg of course. If you shoot monochrome it stays monochrome. Some cameras (don't know whether this applies to the GF1) will give you the option of having a Raw and a Jpeg shot being recorded at the same time.
Third option is to use a program like Gimp or Photoshop and make a monochrome using desaturate or use of the channel mixer. See here for a tutorial in Gimp.
This last option gives you better control of the monochrome end result than your camera, so it might be worth the try.

 

Hi Owen when you shoot raw B&W conversion is easy and rewarding in Aperture. Also all changes are to sidecar files so there is no damage to your original image.

So here is what I do. First I like working on my images in Aperture in full screen “F” toggle that. Second I work with the hud and “H” toggles that. When you are in the hud make sure you have the adjustment tab selected.

Now there are many ways to get black and white. The first area is click on “Adjustment” fly out on in the “Adjustment” tab (under the histogram) and select “Black & White” You will have a black and white image and a control panel will appear that allows you to select the RGB colour mix. It is defaulted to 30, 59, 11 which is pretty much what the human eye sees.

Another way oway that is both fast and good is to go to “Presets” fly out on in the “Adjustment” tab (again under the histogram) and select “Black & White”. Here you will have, I think, nine presets for black and white. All are great places to start.

If you want to take it to the Max do a search on the web for Aperture presets and you will find a slew of free ones. Just add they and have a blast. Some of the free presets are awesome.


Oh if you have lots of money, Nik Software makes excellent add-ons and so does Topaz Labs. I have Nik and they are great but honestly Aperture can do a whole lot out of the box.

 

I think everybody forgot to mention that there is an option to shoot RAW + JPEG ?

cheers

 

Importing into aperture does not change anything. The B&W you saw in-camera was a preview bitmap generated using the GF-1's own software. The RAW file is "raw" and not affected by the GF-1's settings.

If you want the GF-1's B&W conversion you have to shoot JPEG.

In general, using any "fixed" B&W conversion process, whether in-camera of in post processing is a poor method. Each shot can require a different approach in order to get the best results. Doing the B&W conversion in post processing is the only really good way to go.

The advantage to selecting the B&W mode when shooting RAW is that you can get an approximate B&W preview. This can be a big help in composing the image and seeing many of the issues with how different colored object map to different grays. Still, doing the final conversion in post allow for correcting many of the color to gray value issues.

 

Yes, that's what I would recommend if the camera's BW settings are attractive to you. This also gives you the option to play with your editing application BW conversion from the RAW file.