Fred Miranda, who offers a variety of digital photography resources through his Web site, recently released the BW Workflow Pro plug-in, which offers a wide variety of options for working with black-and-white images in Photoshop. It features 8 preset filter selections, 32 duotone presets, 18 tritone presets, 6 quadtone presets, 3 film grain presets and 4 dynamic range presets, with the ability to preview changes before you commit to them.
BW Workflow Pro features three ways to work: Preset Mode, Smart Mix, or Manual mode. Preset mode offers 8 preset filters, including one that has no filter and simply mimics a black and white look. The other filters simulate how the image would look if shot with a certain color filter attached to the camera lens. This mode also includes a tweak filter that’s useful for adjusting the settings in the default filters and an intensity slider that accentuates a certain filter’s effect on an image.
In Smart Mix Mode, you can isolate the red, green, or blue color channel and make changes to the other two, allowing you to alter an image’s look without overexposing or underexposing it. In contrast, Manual Mode allows you to change all the color channels without isolating any of them, which offers the opportunity to come up with a unique look for a picture at the risk of severely underexposing or overexposing it.
BW Workflow Pro is US$29.90. It’s compatible with Photoshop 5.5, 6, 7, and CS. Elements is not supported.