The 12 "Childish David" Black & White actions are divided into three groups.

Each group (vanilla, jungle & magic) represents a different conversion method that will give the photo a different character and look.

Vanilla is the conversion I used the most for my photos. It's optimized for skin tones and will emphasize the face and convert other colors darker.

Jungle is a similar conversion method but it will extract and enhance details in darker areas. This conversion work great on photos taken in dappled light or have hard contrast. These actions are also optimized for skin tones.

Magic is an adjustable conversion method. It gives you a very easy way to change the overall look and characteristics of the conversion without the need to deal with the channel mixer which can be cumbersome to use.

Each group contains 4 actions called HK (=highkey), light, medium & dark.
The conversion method is the same but the tones are adjusted differently.

• Light will give you the popular bright look which works great for baby skin. 
• Medium will give you a similar look, just not as bright. 
• Dark will pull the dark areas even lower and add strong contrast. 
• HK ("highkey") is an extreme version of  "light". It pushes the mid tones to a very bright level. It's a little extreme but works great on some photos. Since it's pushing levels a lot, keep an eye on noise. If you find yourself using this action often I recommend using TIFF (maybe even 16 bit TIFF) instead of JPG when you convert your RAW files. 

How do these actions work ?
All these actions create several adjustment layers. They work like filters or gels that you lay on top of your photo. They change the look, but they don't alter the original photo underneath. This is very useful and allows you to change your mind any time during the process. Unlike other actions that flatten your photos during the process I give you all adjustment layers are available to play with. If you don't feel like fiddling with them, just flatten the layers and you're done.

Vanilla and Jungle are straight forward and simple to use. Just run them on your photo and see which version you like best.

Magic gives you a neat way to adjust the overall look of the B&W. Here is how it works:

• Run the action on your photo.
• Double click on the Layer called "Adjust_Here"

• This will open the following dialog box.

• drag the "Hue" slider back and forth and see how it changes the look of your photo.

This clever way of converting to B&W will give you very different looks and styles all with just one slider.


Toning

All actions add the unique, warm "childish david" toning on the photo. Technically they are not pure Black & White photos.  If you prefer to have on toning at all, just turn off the top layer called "Toning" and you have a neutral Black & White photo.




Tips and Tricks for using my actions

Actions should make our life easier and speed up post processing your photos. You could do all the steps yourself but why not let the computer do the work for you? That’s the reason I created four alternatives for each conversion. Just run the actions and watch it work. If you would like to revert your image to the last state you saved it in, hit F12 and then you can try a lighter or darker action. For the most part, 80% of the time I end up using one of my actions and am very happy with the look. Occasionally I do go in and fine adjust the layers. Here is a quick overview on how:

To make your life easier I created the four version (HK, light, medium, dark) that should get you very close to the look you like.
Even if you plan on adjusting the look yourself I recommend you try the different versions and pick the one that gets you closest, then start adjusting.

The bottom layer called Background is your original. I recommend not doing any adjustment on this layer at all. Keeping it as it is will make sure you can always go back to the original and try something else.

If you use Vanilla the second layer is the channel mixer which is the basic black & white conversion. Here, the three colors (red, green, blue) are mixed to get a grayscale image. If you double-click on this layer you'll see three sliders, one for each color. The percentage determines how much of each color is used. You can change these numbers if you like, but finding the right ratio between them can be tricky. I highly recommend not changing the "constant" slider.

The next layer is the curve editor. By adjusting the curve you can adjust the overall contrast. It gives you very fine control because you can just add control points and drag them to shape the curve. The curve will always try to make a smooth transition from one point to the next which helps maintain a natural look. As long as you keep the very first and very last point where it is you will preserve as much detail as possible in the dark and bright area. Play around with the curve and see how it changes the contrast.

As mentioned before the top layer adds the toning. If you don't like it, just turn this layer off and you get a neutral, true B&W photo. If you like to change the toning to your personal taste, double click on the top layer called "Toning".

If you use Jungle you get the same layers as described, but there is one extra layer called Detail. This layer is a copy of the original image but the dark areas have been pulled up in a clever way to make sure it still looks natural and not washed out. Sometimes this layer has pulled up dark areas too much. If you feel the image looks a little too "foggy" or "flat", reduce the opacity of this layer and see the effect on the photo overall. If you are familiar with layer masks you can use this layer to paint detail only in some areas like hair and cloth.

If you use Magic again, you will get the same layers as in Vanilla, plus a layer called AdjustHere which is, as mentioned above, where you can play with the magic slider to change the overall look.

Please feel free to email me with questions.