Without it (left), a photo remains "accurate" in terms of brightness levels.
But with it (right), it becomes far more high-contrast to feel closer to an illustration or painting. Which certainly makes it clearer. But while it brings out details in middle levels, it totally blows out shadows and highlights.
E.g. the texture of his mask, shirt, and her hand are much clearer. But on the other hand, their hair (and a background object) just turn solid black and lose all detail. But certainly, the vastly higher contrast makes for a much more compelling image IMO.
Black and white images need more contrast to be pleasing. I think that's most of the effect you see here.
Maybe you'd want to start with a decent black and white photograph to get a better comparison.
No matter what you do you probably also don't want to end up with large patches of solid white or black in your source image (unless it's the background). The hair already feels like drowning in black. But to take care of that you need to use photoshop and be careful with the gradient curves :)
I agree; the filtered image (right) is more aesthetically pleasing; but it feels much less accurate. It would depend on the intent of the image I think. If you're creating art, and using photographs in the creation, it's not a problem. If you're reporting on the world and just want to reduce the data size (or use a monochrome output medium), I wouldn't do it like this.
Ah thanks, just tried it out and it indeed produces quite a different result using that filter (default settings) before dithering.
Here's a side-by-side comparison using an image from the front page of nytimes.com (be sure to click to zoom in for the full effect):
https://imgur.com/a/mrHl7FW
Without it (left), a photo remains "accurate" in terms of brightness levels.
But with it (right), it becomes far more high-contrast to feel closer to an illustration or painting. Which certainly makes it clearer. But while it brings out details in middle levels, it totally blows out shadows and highlights.
E.g. the texture of his mask, shirt, and her hand are much clearer. But on the other hand, their hair (and a background object) just turn solid black and lose all detail. But certainly, the vastly higher contrast makes for a much more compelling image IMO.
Black and white images need more contrast to be pleasing. I think that's most of the effect you see here.
Maybe you'd want to start with a decent black and white photograph to get a better comparison.
No matter what you do you probably also don't want to end up with large patches of solid white or black in your source image (unless it's the background). The hair already feels like drowning in black. But to take care of that you need to use photoshop and be careful with the gradient curves :)
Here's a link to the color image https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/12/21/well/21well-klass...
I agree; the filtered image (right) is more aesthetically pleasing; but it feels much less accurate. It would depend on the intent of the image I think. If you're creating art, and using photographs in the creation, it's not a problem. If you're reporting on the world and just want to reduce the data size (or use a monochrome output medium), I wouldn't do it like this.