farnsworth52 Loc: W. Pa.

Why won't Silver Efex Pro2 work on greyscale negative scans. Isn't greyscale just B/W. no color It seems weird that software for B/W doesn't recognize greyscale. I'm not a PP guru but this seems crazy. Someone with more active atoms in the brain Please clarify this for me.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

I think the answer is that Silver Efex Pro2 is completely about making the best B&W from a digital image as possible. Digital cameras don't have B&W film choices. So, something has to be done to get from the digital color world to the B&W world. In other words, you feed Silver Efex the full light spectrum as captured by the sensor. Feeding it with a spectrum limited to shades of grey just might confuse the heck out of it.

I think if the photo was already B&W I would use Lightroom, Photoshop or something to work on exposure, contrast, burning and dodging.

Have you tried Color Efex Pro 2 to enhance your scanned images?

If this thread lives long enough I'll add more comments after I try a few things. Only last week I started scanning a few old 35mm Tri-X negatives. Other than being stunned at how well an Epson V500 does as the first step, I have not figured out what to do next. So far, the Lightroom 5 Radial Filter makes any of my old "burning" and "dodging" efforts look like a child did it. (But, I might have been a child when I use Tri-X!)

farnsworth52 Loc: W. Pa.

I didn't seam to notice this problem until I scanned a few 4x5 negatives. I used the scanner software which was defalted to greyscale. When I tried to use Silver Efex Pro2 it wouldn't recognize the scan until I rescanned the negative using the color selection. They were both exported as Jpeg but the greyscale didn't work. These were both B/W negatives

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

As I wrote, I just started scanning some old B&Ws. My wife bought the scanner for thousands of Kodachromes her dad took flying in 707s as a tourist around the world.

For now, I'm confused about scanner settings. I did one scan to .jpg that was terrible and then again to .tif with a color setting that was far better than I expected.

It may be that in a digital color world that we "convert" the old B&Ws to a version of color for good processing.

As I said, I don't know what I'm doing yet! But, I can say that Silver Efex is amazing when you feed it color images born in a digital camera.

haroldross Loc: Walthill, Nebraska

Convert the image to RGB. In Photoshop, go under the IMAGE menu, select MODE and then choose RGB color. Other software should work about the same.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

My experience is that SF is looking for RGB values with which to work. If it doesn't "see" RGB it is greyed out in the pull down menu. Scan your negatives as if they were color negatives, desaturate, then select SF and it should work.
--Bob

henk33 Loc: Netherlands

Converting to B/W can make a very dull B/W picture or an interesting one. That depends how every color is processed to B/W. Color Silver Efex Pro has a lot of tools to do that well. If you put a B/W in that program it has no color information, so it can do noting.

But why do you want to do a B/W conversion on a B/W picture, it has no sense. I think you mean, you want to process a B/W with contrast, brightness corrections. You can use any Processing Software for that, but not a specialized conversion tool, as Silver Efex is.

jackm1943 Loc: Omaha, Nebraska

Convert the file to RGB. Any professional printer will tell you that RGB files are needed to achieve the best B&W images.

LouT Loc: Maryland

Go into Photoshop>edit>mode>RGB. That lies to silver efex and it thinks it is a RGB file. That will give you access to the presets.

jackm1943 Loc: Omaha, Nebraska

Lying? Isn't it a real RBG file at that point?