Dale Yates  


Christmas Table by Dale Yates

December 2020 - Christmas Table

About the Image(s)

Image Deion: This photo of our table decorated for Christmas was taken a few years ago. This is a black and white image with the color of the lights and decorations retained.

My goal with this photo was to exercise some creativity in keeping some of the color. Due to the long exposure, a tripod was utilized for this image. This photo was taken using a Canon SL1 camera with a Tamron 18-200 f/3.5-6.3 zoom lens. For this photograph I used an aperture of f/16 with a shutter speed of 1/30 of a second, ISO 100, and a focal length of 20mm. This photo was taken in RAW format.

Post processing in Lightroom includes adjustments to white balance, exposure and contrast, highlights and shadows, overall sharpness and noise reduction. I then utilized Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 to convert the image to black and white. I also utilized the control points in Silver Efex Pro 2 to selectively retain some color in the lights and decorations.


This round’s discussion is now closed!
4 comments posted




Steven Jungerwirth   Steven Jungerwirth
Great shot - love the sharpness/texture of the wood and simple surroundings. Glad you chose to bring back the red/green - makes the scene festive and pop.

One property of the Silver Efex control points is that they select or mask in similar colors/tones within some radius. Sometimes those are hard to see when you display the mask (esp as they feather out). In your image - the table/chairs appear to have a colored hue (some red/orange/yellow/green) - I think because they were brown - and brown has some many of those other colors. When you selectively colorized the red/green lights - I think some of that spilled onto the wood. The upside is you have smoother transitions and often more appealing results - makes the control points relatively easy to use (without feathering edges, etc.).

I tried to repeat what you did - using a mask I could brush in (not in Silver Efex) - to ensure that the colorization was localized. To my eye , the resulting image gives the wood a truer B&W quality.

Which one you prefer - is personal choice!   Posted: 12/03/2020 09:52:07
Comment Image
Lance Lewin   Lance Lewin
Good you pointed this out - I too noticed the over-spray, as it were, onto the otherwise BW portion of this photograph.

However, I still like Dales version, for the reason you mentioned: Smoother Transition.   Posted: 12/03/2020 10:15:40



Jennifer Marano   Jennifer Marano
Hi Dale,

I have to totally agree with both Steven and Lance. I did notice the brown tones of the wood, but thought it was due to use of sepia. Steven's explanation makes much more sense. I have to agree with Lance in preferring your version. The whole scene has that expectant, night-before-Christmas feel!   Posted: 12/03/2020 12:22:41



Chan Garrett   Chan Garrett
Dale: What a very nice Christmas image! Thank you for also teaching me a way to bring back selective color in Silver Efex. Formerly I would have spent more time in PS using layers and masks to do this. I see what Steven and Lance are saying, but I don't see a problem with your finished image. Two ways to do the same thing.   Posted: 12/03/2020 16:09:00