Black and White Image Conversion with the GIMP
One of the reasons I was hesitant to switch from film to digital photography was the fun of experimenting with different films and the joy of finding one that really seemed to give incredible results (I always loved playing with Kodak T-max for example)
Tonight I’ve been trying to fill that void by experimenting with B&W conversion using GIMP. I’ve found it much more effective to shoot in color and convert during post production to really get the best tones. Unfortunately, GIMP out-of-the-box does not handle this work flow as well as Photoshop, in my opinion.
After some searching though, I found a great script that both automates the process and gives some really great tone control. The technique uses Channel Mixer presets to simulate tonal response of various black and white films. You can apply various filters to the film as well. By choosing Filter option you can apply yellow, orange, red, and green filters to the film. It can even generate the results as a new layer and automatically rename it using the settings you choose—very useful for making tweaks and comparing.
The original script however, does not work with GIMP 2.4.5, so I’ve updated it and am distributing it here under the GNU-GPL.
