First Exposure by Larry Brownstein
B+W Digital Filters

I have a feeling that in this digital age photographers are using fewer optical filters. That would not be too surprising considering the ease with which images can be adjusted in Photoshop. Certainly it is no longer necessary to use color correction filters, such as FLD, 80A and 85, since digital cameras have built-in white point balancing. But I’ll bet it goes way beyond that. Whereas once photographers would turn to optical filters for creative effects, they are probably now using digital filters instead.

There are probably thousands of digital filters available, and I have experimented with many of them. Some of them are a barrel of fun—MetaCreations KPT Vortex Tiling comes immediately to mind. It takes a source image and warps it into a swirling vortex of distorted replicas. Some filters are very practical such as Digimarc filters that embed and read watermarks in a digital image. There are many filters that simulate artistic effects such as Photoshop’s native Watercolor filter.

It has seemed to me that what was missing were software filters equivalent to the optical filters that have for a long time been popular with photographers—Polarizers, graduated neutral density filters, 81-series warming filters, and soft-focus filters. B+W is a name many photographers recognize as a manufacturer of premium optical filters. That is why I was eager to look at the new offerings from B+W Digital Imaging. As a manufacturer of optical filters, I reasoned, they would likely be sensitive to this need.

B+W packages the filters into two sets: the Outdoor Set and the Portrait and Family Set. The Outdoor set contains these filters: Brighten, Graduated Blue, Graduated Neutral Density, Polarizing Enhancer, Summertime and Warming. The Portrait & Family Set contains these filters: Black and White (cool), Enhance Colors, Luna, Soft Focus, Summertime and Warming.

These filters are standard “plug-in” filters. They are compatible with Photoshop and other programs that use the Photoshop “plug-in” standard, such as Photoshop Elements and Corel Photo Paint. I used Photoshop for my tests. In Photoshop, once the filters are installed they are accessible from the Photoshop Filters menu with a menu pick for each of the two filter sets. The individual filters are found in the sub-menus.

Figure 1	Figure 2

I started my tests with a picture of Bree in a wedding dress (Figure 1). It was taken in a studio with four flash heads bouncing off of two large white cards on both sides of her, creating very soft light. The camera was positioned in between the white cards. I wanted to exaggerate the feeling of this being an old photo (the dress and the boa give a hint of this). Sepia toning is an effect that many photographers use for this purpose. This process is done on a finished black-and- white print. I wanted to see if I could do something similar with the software filters. I used the Enhance Colors filter and played with the sliders until I got the understated effect I desired (Figure 2). How nice to get a Sepia effect without the mess and unpredictability of using chemicals!

Over the years I have converted from an optical filter fan to a purist (what you see is what you get). The one filter that I still occasionally use is the Polarizer. I don’t even use it much anymore because my favorite lens (a 17–35mm zoom Nikkor) has a front element that is too large for most Polarizers. Also, it is so wide-angle (at 17mm) that it would vignette with most Polarizers (since they tend to be thick filters). Furthermore, I keep the hood on this lens to prevent lens flare, yet another thing that would interfere with successful use of a polarizer. Also I tend to use the tripod less these days so I can’t afford to lose the two f-stops that a polarizer absorbs! As you can see, though I love how a Polarizer can improve photos, I have had many reasons for forsaking its use.

Figure 3	Figure 4

Could the B+W Polarizing Enhancer provide the same rich, saturated colors that result from using a polarizer? To find out, I used a picture of the Los Angeles skyline that I like, which has some clouds against a vivid blue sky (Figure 3). I shot this with a Mamiya 7 II 6x7 camera with the panoramic adaptor that allows you to run 35mm film through this 120mm camera. With the interesting clouds, I thought this image would be a good test for the Polarizing Enhancer. I played with the sliders until I got some nice contrast between the clouds and the sky. I also got a slight bit of warming, which can be seen in the light-colored building on the right. Figure 4 shows the results of this filter. In my opinion, it is much like the results off a conventional polarizer. Quite impressive!

Back to the Portrait and Family Set—I had an interesting picture of Luba (Figure 5), which needed a little bit of help. The picture was taken in open shade with a bit of flash. This kind of light is nice and soft. The only problem is that the light is a bit cool, since there is no direct sunlight. Even if I had a warming filter available at the time, I wouldn’t have used it because I was shooting at 1⁄60 second and couldn’t risk any slower shutter speeds. I simply used the Warming filter and added just a bit of warmth.

Figure 5	Figure 6

The result is seen in Figure 6. You have to compare the two images closely to even see the difference. But this is the kind of subtlety that I am glad to have available from these filters. If I had wanted a more noticeable effect, perhaps simulating the effects of an 85 series filter, it was an option the software made available to me by simply dragging the sliders a bit more.

Lastly, I wanted to experiment with converting a color image to black and white. I had this image of Pegah (Figure 7), which I began to feel was a little over the top with color. It was done in the studio with a ring flash illuminating the model and a gelled flash head illuminating the background. Between the colored gels and the colored beads I thought it was too colorful, so I used the Black and White (cool) filter, which did a pretty good job. However, seeing the results I realized I wanted to bump up the contrast before converting to black and white. I wanted to blow out some detail in the face, and I wanted the black dress to stand out more in the final image, too. I used the Luna filter to add contrast, as seen in Figure 8. Then I used the Black and White (cool) filter resulting in a beautifully contrasty black and white image, as seen in Figure 9.

I tried all the other filters in the sets, too. My two favorites are the Polarizing Enhancer and the Warming filter. Besides freeing me from needing to use conventional optical filters, they are so easy to use!

B+W also provides some great user-interface features. For example, the Preview window has a button to enlarge (zoom-in) on the image, allowing me to see the effect more easily. A Reset button is easily available to reset the filter back to default settings. I find I use Reset often when using filters. It allows me to play with the sliders with no hesitation as I can easily get back to “home base.”

What would I change? Well, first of all, I would drop the silly “(cool)” from the name of the Black and White (cool) filter. The Enhance Colors filter was a bit too far out for my taste. It reminds me of the wild, but not so useful, effects that one can achieve simply by chopping the curve in Photoshop’s Curve command. The Soft Focus filter actually seemed too subtle to me, I couldn’t see a difference after applying the Soft Focus filter.

Figure 7	Figure 8	Figure 9

On the product packaging (backside) there are before and after examples of one of the filters in the set. It would be great if they showed a similar before and after for each filter so the user can see their capabilities. It might not fit on the product packaging, but a one-page insert would be all that is needed.

While wild and crazy effects are possible with these filters, the best thing about them is the subtlety that they allow. Being able to use a software filter to warm an image ever so slightly allows me not to worry about whether I have an 81a, 81b or 81c filter on my lens. Now with B+W Digital Filters it is even easier than using Photoshop’s native abilities to do this.

The filter sets are available for Windows and Mac OS X. Mac OS 9 is not supported. Under Mac OS X only the following versions of software are currently supported: Photoshop 7 and Photoshop CS, Adobe Elements 2.0, and Corel Photo Paint 11.0. There are fewer restrictions on the Windows side. The B+W web site has more details: www.schneideroptics.com/software/b+w_software_filters.

Many thanks to models, Pegah Ghamary, Bree Victoria and Lyubov Soluhabova for their efforts—L.B.

Larry Brownstein is author and photographer of Los Angeles: Where Anything is Possible, an inspirational look at life, culture and architecture in L.A. He is represented by Getty Images, California Stock and other photo agencies. His work includes travel, landscape, portraiture and wedding photography. His web site is www.larrybrownstein.com. He can be reached at larryb@larrybrownstein.com/.