I really like the Hard B&W JPEG preset in my Ricoh GR IIIx. I use it quite often knowing that I always have the RAW file to fall back on if needed. The main advantage is that aside from cropping a bit, and maybe a schoshe of vignetting if I feel like it, the shots are ready to use almost immediately. Still, I have been wondering if taking a couple of minutes to try the B&W conversion in Photomator (I’ll try it in Lightroom too but with the cost of Adobe’s Creative Cloud I may be trying to save some money?). Anyway, I gave it a go and came pretty close in about 2 minutes. I had to crop a bit mostly to straighten the horizon so it was pretty quick. To me the RAW conversion looks a bit smoother. Is it “better”? Not necessarily. At some point I’ll get around to printing these to see if I like one or the other better.
For the converted RAW file it was, basically, convert to B&W and then bang the red an green sliders all the way right (100%) and the green slider most of the way left (80%) and then hit the Tone left 54%.
Check out the 3rd photo too. It is kinda weird.
So, what’s up with the next image? I’ve been trying to compare my OM System OM-1 to the GR IIIx in the same setting. Since I got the OM System 20mm f1.4 PRO they have pretty much the same field of view. Oddly though when I tried to convert the OM System ORF RAW file like I did the Ricoh DNG file I got a weird result. Not sure yet if it is a Photomator thing or Apple’s RAW converter. I’ll try it in Lightroom or OM Workspace but clearly Photomator does some goofy stuff at this point. Kind of a cartoonish quality to the sky, no?
