Putting It All Together – A Complex Transformation

The final monochrome example shows what can be done with a combination of the techniques mentioned above. Methodology was, after a careful examination of the tonal ranges, to adjust each tonal zone, adding anchors as needed. About all that needs doing to this before printing is to clone out the black vapour trail in the sky and crop tighter.

Control arrows and the tonal changes:

• 1 is inserted and required by PWP. In this image it remains untouched.
• 2 Is an anchor and was added after 3 made the deeper shadows too light. It anchors the shadow under the bike and parts of the saddle bags. Location for 2 was determined by the tone range between the shadow under the bike and the desire to lighten the saddle and backrest leather, then fine tuned to get the desired result.
• 3 & 5 These control arrows were added to lighten and invert the darker parts of the bike – the seat and saddle bags. Probe was used to determine their positions, then they were fine tuning. Note that 3 moves the dark regions into the mid grey tones and is located in the tonal range of the seat/saddlebags/backrest.

• 4 & 7 are anchors to contain the effects of 5&6 and also cause inversions in the grass tones.
• 5 & 6 these stretch the tonal range of the grass , giving it a grey floaty look. As 6 is located within the tonal range for the grass, partial inversion has taken place due to the effect f 7 and 8. Similarly 5 is also within the tonal range for the grass, so inversion’s taken place at that end of the scale as well due to 4. Output tonal range for the grass was also picked to maintain the definition of the front wheel and prevent it disappearing into the grass as has happened on some of the other exmple images.
• 8 & 9 The primary purpose of these control arrows is to invert the sky’s tonal ranges, creating the halo and dark sky which together frame the bike and allow the white outlines to better delineate the bike.
• 8 has also caused the rightmost trees to be almost white, and has lifted the leftmost trees, giving them white halos.
• 9 Has the effect of pulling the highlight areas of the bike down into the dark greys, adding to the complexities of the highlight areas. This large stretching ahs caused posterisation which has caused an interesting ringing effect around the highlight line at the front of the saddlebag and in other areas.
• 10 and 11 invert the remaining highlights. As 9 has pulled part of the highlights into the very dark greys, 11 was only moved as dark as the mid tones, giving more tonal ranges in the forks.

As the bike falls into many tonal ranges, the effects of adjusting the other areas of the image have inverted various areas of the bike as well as the highlights. 6 & 7 lie in the tonal range of the front mudguard/fender. Tones in the fuel tank range over almost the whole tonal range of the image.