008: B&W Lip Contrast Rage

Why do I have to make lips darker when I use auto B&W filters?

It's been awhile, yes. But that's because I was trying to come up with a few topics I should cover that are more graphic-related than whatever's happening in New Media for this entry. I couldn't think of anything I wanted to really talk about, though...until lately when I had to do this.

As some of you gamer geeks may know, Pokemon Black and Pokemon White came out on March 6th. This is relevant because today, I'm going to be talking about black and white digital quickshops - not necessarily photos, but quickshops, those times where you want a cool filter on your Facebook profile photo and you don't want to stress too much time with whatever it is you're doing. But beyond black and white quickshopping, I'm going to talk about my biggest quirk with it - lips.

This is my demonstration subject, a profile mugshot of a young Milo Ventimiglia of Heroes fame from his Gilmore Girls days. Note the contrast between his lips and his skin - a very obvious coral pink from the rest of the yellowish-peachish skin colour, both standing out on their own. (This shouldn't be too hard for the ladies.) I'm going to make Milo black-and-white by running a Desaturation filter. Pay attention to the difference in detail as I will place the original photo next to the result:

Now this is the reason why most people don't tell you to use a Desaturation filter when it comes to making your photos black and white - it's the wrong way of doing it. Granted, you could probably play with Brightness/Contrast or Levels and Curves but why bother taking additional steps not recommended at all? This also applies to Grayscale mode - don't do it. As you can see, we've lost Red Alpha Channel (a.k.a. we've lost many details in the lighting), but worst of all, Milo's lips are practically the same shade with the rest of his skin and they no longer pop out as much.

For some, this might be okay. I mean, I think it's okay, but we're talking about Milo Ventimiglia - I could care less if there was a rainbow gradient over him, it's not distracting from Milo himself. Actually, this is a pretty good photo in general of just running a quick auto-B&W filter on because it still keeps enough lip shade. Here's the same photo, but with that quick auto-B&W filter applied:

There's a little colour you notice in the B&W filter compared to the dull grey of Desaturated, there's more preservation in lighting, and best of all, his lips contrast with his skin a little more. Awesome. Always use the B&W filter on Photoshop to get the desired lighting, alpha, and control you want with B&W photos. There's also Channel filters but since I'm still studying Channels (which are really handy, by the way), we won't go into that. This is for quickshops, something under five minutes.

Now let's say the only thing you knew was Desaturate. Okay, well, we're going to take our Desaturated photo, and we're going to brush black over his lips. Yes, we are essentially putting digital lipstick on Milo Ventimiglia. He's probably used to real-life makeup on set anyway.

As you can see here, we did this in three steps: 

1. Painted black over Desaturated Milo's lips using a brush
2. Applied an Overlay/Soft Light filter to the paint layer so it's more natural-ish
3. Dropped the Opacity down to about 15% - 20% so it's more natural and no longer ish  

Here's the before and after side-by-side:

As you can see, it's very subtle, but there is contrast between the lips and the skin now. 

Now, let's place the Lip-Coloured Desaturated Milo with Auto-B&W Milo and Milo and see the contrast similarities:

I'd say that's pretty good and now, they more or less match each others' contrast. But to conclude, I wish I didn't have to do this lip-colour-contrast thing as much. The B&W filter itself, auto or maual, works far more superior over Desaturate or Grayscale filters for better preservation of alpha and lighting, as well as control over those - but I personally like to see a little more lip contrast on B&W photos, even if it's subtle. That's something I require another layer for.