I’ve already raised some time ago, one thing I miss, is the ability to use the Wavelet tool (or Contrast by Detail Level) for people/portrait skin smoothing, and then convert the resulting, filtered image to Black and White (either with the B&W filter, or Film Simulation.
Currently, as soon as I turn B&W on, skin smoothing is removed.
Would it be possible to move the B&W filter later in the pipeline? Or another solution? (other than saving the smoothed images and reopening them for B&W conversion).
This might be tough depending on what the process steps are? For instance - how are you isolating any skin smoothing to actual skin tones? If you are using color tones for skin targeting to smooth, I can understand losing those changes on modification to B&W.
Can you re-apply the wavelet tool after conversion to B&W? (I haven’t played with this personally).
In Rawtherapee, if I use “Contrast by Detail Level” or “Wavelet” tools, I can target their action to a hue range corresponding roughly to skin hue range. What would like to see is the resulting smoothed image being passed to B&W or Film simulation tools. The only way I found is to play with CIECAM settings, Colofullness for exemple, which apparently processes the full image at a later stage. But I have no control on the B&W toning.
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You might want to try a two step process. Do your skin smoothing, develop to a tiff to freeze any interactions, and then do your B&W conversions. I’ve done something similar about a year ago with decent results.
Sebastien
Difficult to solve this problem, the process of RT:
a) raw (with Retinex, demosaic, WB, etc.)
b) rgb with tiles (RGB black and white, exposure, etc.)
c) Lab: without tiles (CBDL, Lab adjustements, etc.) for all processes except Wavelet (tiles and full image)
The only real possibility, but that likely disadvantages (??) and to check that it is feasible, is to move CBDL and the fit between a) and b)…or duplicate code CBDL (??)
jacques
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@scribble, yeas I know I could do this in 2 steps, but since both tools are present in the same software, I’d prefer a simpler solution and be able to use them both concurrently in the same editing session. The problem with that solution is that I cannot adjust both steps interactively, step 2 needs step 1 to be completed and saved, and if I need to go back because I’m not satisfied or want to try some other settings, I need to reopen the step 1 image, losing step 2…
@jdc, Jacques thanks for your insight. Maybe another possibility would to copy a simplified version of CBDL between a) and b), just for as a skin smoothing filter? Otherwise, since I was able to do a basic B&W conversion from “Colourfulness” in CIECAM02 section, could it be possible to add some toning tools in there?
I’ll take a closer look and see if it is possible to put “CBDL” between a) and b) with a “combobox” in the GUI to switch between the current configuration and the new.
Of course if no one objects
No objection for me 
Thanks Jacques for looking into this.
This is something we should first discuss in GitHub before editing any code.