thanks to all for the nice comments. FYI this is my only grandchild and I had been hoping to get him in such a setting but hadnt been to the barber shop with him til now. I recalled my own grandfather cutting my hair and how I tried not to move so the recreation in BW was an attempt to recapture that old image from my childhood.
Ive been experimenting with the BW conversions and found that by increasing color in original, before converting to BW, then adding a touch of pencil or charcoal in separate layer and selectively erasing to areas I want it, it increases detail. I also blew it up and used the burn tool on eyelashes and brows since his hair is so light after blowing it up used 15 to 30 percent darken RGB on areas like dark spots in hair hair and shadow under nose. The Hands of the barber were appeared more in focus because I used the darken RFB tool on creases of hands, thumbnail edges and shading on left back of hand to give appearance of sharper focus. all at low opacity. Ive just been experiementing but it does seem to give more depth to the standard conversions. As a tip, Ive found also that by adding a light layer of oil to animals, horses coats, dog fur etc, then converting to bw, it gives a special depth to the overall image and appearance of better contrast also. Ive had little luck with destaturating and had to make do with these methods. I will figure out more as I go hopefully. Its unbelievable how many options there are for processing photos and im still a beginner but love it. If you have any of your own tricks for enhancing color to BW photos, Id love to hear them. Kenny ps to Sandy, was that last comment for me or a Dave?
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