Hello, I have quite a few apps on my iPhone, but I have not been able to settle on one for B/W that I really like. I was just wondering what others are using and enjoying. Thanks and Thanks for the site. It's great.

I love PureCarbon - it lets me quickly and intuitively set rgb filtering (I forget exact nomenclature.. I mean it lets me decide which channels to desaturate, a lot like PSP channels or using a colored filter in the film days). Additonally, I can tint my mono image and adjust exposure. Two quibbles - I HATE the startup sound. A photo app should be silent always. A lesser evil, the exposure "grid" really should be just a slider, as their is no effect on the "Y" axis, only "X". PureCarbon, if you ever read this - ditch the SOUND! That being said, it's a great app.

Thank you Glen. I saw that. I thought how funny that I was just recommended that. haha Perfect timing.

and I can't believe I just misspelled your name Glyn. sorry it's early.

I read in the Spica review you said you can get most of the same effects from EffectsLab. I LOVE Chris's apps, this one included. The one thing that has eluded me is that I have not been able to get a Sepia effect. Have you? If so, I would love to know what settings you used. I don't know if you keep up with his apps, but he has a LOMO style app in the works. Looks nice. Thanks for the input.

I guess if I had waited I could have read your review of the B/W apps soon. haha. I have been playing more and more with Photogene and EffectsLab ( thanks for the tip on the Sepia, that nailed what I was looking for), when I have time to play with the capture. I am really liking Spica for the quick and dirty aspect you can get in lower light. I know its just the old dog in me but I want someone to develop an app where you can burn and dodge like the good old days in the darkroom. Ahh I can almost smell the fix.

I like the black and white option in CameraKit a lot. You can play with the levels a bit. Als the hicon option in Toycamera is one of my favs for black and white's. As a dedicated app I like Spica and Monotaste with Toylens. Only downside, Monotaste asves at a loe resolution, but in a future release this will be adressed.

Sorry for the typos :-)

I quite like Oldcamera. Like Toycamera, the random filter selection adds a gaming element to the experience.
For dramatic effect, Spica is hard to beat. It's hard to take a mundane photo with that app.

I bought Spica based on your recommendation, Glyn. It does one thing, but wow! I love how it processes images! The contrast is great and it seems to add a bit of noise to the image as well. I've used other b&w converters, but none that do quite as nice and as "rough" a job as Spica.

=M=

Hands down, VintB&W for straight to black and white great contrasted photos.

A few examples on my Flickr stream:

1- http://www.flickr.com/photos/sionfullana/3750811753/
2- http://www.flickr.com/photos/sionfullana/3726998733/
3- http://www.flickr.com/photos/sionfullana/3639404325/

@Sion the only & huge main reason I won't use any of the Vint apps very often or at all anymore is they don't allow you to apply the effect to existing photos. So since more often than not I like to have my original color image & apply an effect after... I personally don't see Vint B&W as a top app in my collection (actually no vint app is on my iPhone anymore). But on the other hand I see that it makes great results. And I can see the other side arguing why not just use the app as a main camera & take the shot... The editor in me rarely likes to shoot that way =)

Spica hands down.

I really love Spica, but I've found myself using MonoPhix 2 on more and more images.

=M=

Spica, HiCon Pro, PictureShow, CinemaFX, Photo fx, MillColour, CameraBag (full res now), MonoPhix & even Best Camera has nice B&W effects. These are all ones I use often

If someone wants to try MonoPhix they can always begin with MonoPhix Lite which I made available for free. I made it to compete with other black & white apps which also only provide one slider for contrast and I'm quite pleased with the results myself.

Renzo Verleysen
UIC Phoenxsoftware/MonoPhix Dev

I believe that a serious B&W app should handle coloured filters!!
I'll give a try to PureCarbon very soon.

Help!

My favourite black and white effect is Vint B&W. Unfortunately there is no option to postprocess. Often i want to add another pic not taken with Vint B&W to series. For me its important that all pics have the same look. I tried several apps like camera bag, camera kit, monophix and other. even all creates great black and white pics i could not find a way to create that Vint B&W effect in a postprocess.

Does anybody know a solution?

@Tomba you could try using something like EffectsLab and build your own filters. Nice this is that you can save the filter and use it over and over. Not quick and dirty like most filter packs, but a very powerful editor.

@Catmouth
Thanks for your hint. Looks like you could do a lot of things. But how would i get these Vint B&W effect. Did you get it and could deliver add info how to set the sliders? Believe thats not so easy if you dont know which settings are the right ones. There are a lot of!

@Tomba I have not built that effect, sorry. I was just suggesting an editor that I thought might be powerful enough to get that effect and make it reproducible. I have only a few effects I built, none of which are anything spectacular. I didn't mean to put my cart before the horse by offering up that suggestion. haha

You might want to make notes as you are building effects as you can not go back and modify them after you save your stack. Just a FYI in case you are new to the program. Good luck and let me know if you get a good one and I'll do the same.

This is actually a very good question. My favorite Apps to work B&W are the Tiffen App CoolFX and the free App MillColour. CoolFX offers so many options such as grain and diffusion which may be applied in layers. I would have to say that the most pleasing B&W images I see are the ones from VintB&W.

I have just purchased EffectsLab and plan to make several attempts at creating a B&W filter set that I like. It would be interesting if others using this app share their "formulas"

@Charles
"... most pleasing B&W images I see are the ones from VintB&W..." Exactly what i also say.
Unfortunately Erik, developer of Vint B&W, still has no plans to make postprocessing possible. Catsmouth also recommended a try with EffectsLab, but i dont have the knowledge and the time to rebuild the Vint B&W with EffectsLab. And it will be difficult to share these formulas between us because there are no "numbers" in the sliders to reproduce. Could not Christopher Comair built this filter into his app? that would be a comfortable way.
The best way still would be if Erik would build in postprocessing like Spica, Shakeitphoto do. Would keep the app clean and simple and would give us the freedom of choice.
I believe that missing of these feature is limiting sales of Vint B&W now.
May be it helps if more people write to Erik and require this feature. Last update was one year ago. Its time to give us a bit more. If he needs some additional money he could offer this as an inapp-purchase. I would pay another 79 Eurocents.

My personal reply is there is one & only one reason I personally do NOT use any of the "Vint" apps anymore & do not promote them any longer is the lack of "post processing". For me it is almost an absolute must! Without this option I rarely use an app that won't give it's users such a choice.

I'm back. I've tried "Pure Carbon".
My review:

Pros:
- nice Interface
- Easy control over RGB filters
- Nice int effect
- Good exposure controls

Cons:
- Ugly sound when app starts!
- 2 useless example pictures in the splash screen

I reccomend it, add control to your bw!

Sorry for the typo..

i meant " - Nice exposure effect"!

Anybody out there try yet B&W Photo Pro? It is about $5.99, but looks to be far more comprehensive for BW than the other apps.

I don't want instant conversions. What I like in a BW app is the ability to engage in toning and filtering, and thus process my conversions carefully. Effects Lab seems pretty good and straightforward. PureCarbon also sounds good. B&W Photo Pro seems to have more features, more control, and the ability to live preview the effect on your image.

Any thoughts or experience with this app anybody?

Thanks,

N

I was thinking about downloading B&W pro photo. It has so many Extras though that I don't want. I just want black and white image processing. We shall see. I would be interested to know if it is worth it.

Thanks Glyn, I will try it, but I normally prefer to shoot in color and then do the conversion... hmmm... I'll try Vint and see how it does. Thanks,

N

Well, I tried to do a bit of comparison... it is not at all an objective look, nor a review. Just a personal attempt to convert and see how I liked the results. You can see the original image and the various conversions here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ncordova/sets/72157623570334796/detail/

As I note in the comment, there are multiple ways to do the conversion, and part of the fun is in trying out experimentally just what happens with one or another app -- so, I'll keep various apps for this purpose at hand.

I'm also considering B&W Photo Pro, but its $5.99 price tag is keeping me away for now.

This is, to say the least, an extremely subjective task. What's more, some times I feel like working an image, and at other times I want to be done quickly. I believe that the iPhone as camera privileges a "quick-no-over-fussing" techno-graphic ethos. That, coupled with a lomographic, experimental attitude to this kind of photography might just add to a disposition that takes extensive processing as not quite natural to this medium.

- MonoPhix: there's something I like about MonoPhix and I wish it would give me more options and a bigger window in which to preview the results of the processing.

- Photoforge's Black and White filter I found no good, so I ended up using their Hue/Saturation option to desaturate and then work the image with curves, etc. Not a bad option, but no toning possible that way.

- I really enjoyed Pure Carbon's easy way to manage the RGB filtering/toning and the tint. It is intuitive and quick. The app is streamlined for this and I found it quite good. I wish it provided a way to capture the final choice (some numerical output would be helpful). I don't mind its sounds as much as other folks apparently do.

- I like Mill Colour a lot, and it worked well here, but it is not as natural a choice for this work *for me.* Desaturating and then playing with Lift, Gain, and Gamma -- on the RGB channels does provide quite a useful setup -- and the dials allow you to "dial-in" particular effects. I see Mill Colour more as a way to play with some of those details more *after* I have already converted an image. I like the darker look of the image here. In addition, Mill Colour requires a bit more than the usual skill and knowledge to use effectively.

- Photoshop Mobile was OK, it did a straight simple conversion that I found to be just a first step. It struck me as just a desaturation shift with very limited options for processing BW. It is too light for my taste, and I would have to take it to another app to finish up.

- Tiffen's Photo FX, and Cool FX provide quite a set of pre-set filters (hicon, newspaper, normal, high key, grainy, glamour, flashback, reminiscing, diffused, sepia, etc.) and limited adjustments such as the amount of the effect applied, and brightness (although this depends on which set of filters you end up getting Cool or Photo FX). I like some of these filters, and consider them great options from time to time, especially as starting points. A cool thing about these filters is that they are stackable. One can add a filter as a layer, and continue adding other filters.What's more, in combination with some of the other filters, one can create very nifty effects. I would do my conversion somewhere else and then use these filters (if needed or desired).

- EffectsLab is quite nifty and I can see it being very helpful for those moments when I want to spend time just playing with the processing for a while. I wish it gave me better preview abilities, as well as a numerical indicator of my choices (so I could easily reproduce them or report them). The output will definitely depend on your skill (and knowledge of the options) or willingness to work the image. A helpful part of this app is that one can load the original, process it to enhance whatever features one desires to highlight (saturation, luminance, color balance, etc.) and then move on to the conversion to BW. The stacking ability and saving custom effects is great to have. It is by no means as intuitive, nor as easy to use as some of the other ones. It requires a bit more knowledge, but I think time spent with it can pay off.

My favorites from the above was Pure Carbon and EffectsLab. I can see using them together, or combining the processing with Mill Colour. Pure Carbon because it was so easy to use, and Effects Lab because of the bevy of features it provides.

There are many other options for B&W conversions or capture. Glyn speaks highly of Vint B&W. I'll try that soon. Spica seems to be a good one for more Noir style BW. It'd be nice to have an app that would just combine all the best features (preview of RGB channels, selective dodge and burn, RGB filtering, Tint, Structure (or local contrast), etc.

Anyway, all for now.

N