Black Silk
Intuitive Black and White Imaging
Download Troubleshooting Feedback
Black Silk is an intuitive black and white conversion software with focus on a responsive user interface and workflow.
Multiplatform and fast:
Black Silk utilizes the power of multicores and modern graphic processing units to provide you instant feedback on your modifications. Black Silk is available for all three major platforms:
For Microsoft Windows as Standalone and as Photoshop plugin
For Apple OSX as Standalone and as Photoshop plugin
For Linux as Standalone
Open Development
FD Imaging involves the community and users of Black Silk in the development process. We provide new alpha versions regularly and we will provide free alphas until the final version releases. Please note that Black Silk is currently in an early alpha stage, so crashes and image artifacts may occur.
If you want to send us feedback, press on the feedback link on the top of this page.
What users say:
Taken from the Ubuntu Software Center User Reviews:
“Having been a longtime b&w film photographer before going digital, this is a nice app that lets you take your digital color photos (as .jpg or .tif – did not try other formats yet) and make them into black & white photos. I love the selection of film types you can select. You can play around with a variety of filters (effects) to get just the effect you want without much of a learning curve. If you want to play around with black and white without a darkroom, this is a quick and easy app to use.” – 5 out of 5 stars
“Although I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 and Nikon Capture NX2, I believe in giving the more obscure system a try against the Big Boys in the Graphic Arena and so far I have used this system twice with no crashes and it is absolutely superb in bringing out the detail in a photographic print – and I will be using this system when I present my Portfolio to the Royal Photographic Society (of which I am a member) to gain an LRPS Distinction.” – 5 out of 5 stars
“Great App! Easy to use and good functionality! Thanks!” – 4 out of 5 stars
App Stores and alternative download sites:
Download at Ubuntu App Store
Download at Adobe Marketplace
Feedback:
You can send us feedback to: contact@fd-imaging.com
Notes:
The image “Moewe” is (cc) by PG Palmer.
The image “Signs” is (CC) by Mark Pegrum.
Hi, I have been using this in Ubuntu, bought from the Software Center, but now no longer works in 12.10. Is this going to be upgraded?
Many thanks
Officially we support only LTS versions, mainly because we have limited testing resources.
You could try running the direct download from this website though:
http://fd-imaging.com/apps-2/blacksilk-bw-toolkit/download/
I have had to uninstall to upgrade to 12.10… Is this going to be upgraded soon? I use to use this app a lot and I hope to still be able to use it.
Excellent work.. I just hope the Ubuntu Software Centre will be upgraded to a compatible version for the latest OS..
Thanks
When trying to manually install I get the following error:
pst007x@pst007x-Serval-Professional:~$ sudo chmod +x BlackSilk.sh
pst007x@pst007x-Serval-Professional:~$ sudo ./BlackSilk.sh
.app/BlackSilk: error while loading shared libraries: .app/BlackSilk: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
The Install.py installs ok…
Ubuntu 12.10…
Is there a repository? Thanks
Sorry sorted… didn’t notice the .app file… Thanks
doesn’t run on win7 x64 (c++ runtime error)
@Enrico: We uploaded a fixed version. This should work now.
I would love to see this as a Corel AfterShot Pro plugin aswell :)
http://aftershotpro.com/plugins/plugins-developer.html
Is this possible?
@tor: We will consider a possible Black Silk AfterShot Pro plugin, when the commercial version of Black Silk releases.
Great! :D
What kind of time perspective do you have regarding this?
@tor: We targeted the final release of Black Silk and it’s counterpart Red Silk( for colored photos ) around late autumn 2013, but no guarantee. We are currently testing Gimp integration and working on a new rendering engine to improve speed and workflow. New features such as comfortable preset preview or local adjustments are planned for early 2013.
The next alpha release( 0.4.0 ) of Black Silk is scheduled around Christmas.
Cheers
Thank you!
When I tested it on Ubuntu 12.04 before i upgraded to 12.10 I was really impressed. I also like very much that you are working on an Gimp integration. When Gimp support 16 bit color channels this will be a very good combination. Main reason I still would prefer AfterShot as a BlackSilk host is that in AfterShot I could work directly on my RAW files. AfterShot also provide layers so this would be a VERY powerful combination for BW RAW processing. The current BW plugins for AfterShot is not by far as elegant and functional as BlackSilk.
Good luck to you, and thanks again for a great software.
Hallo,
crashes immideatly on Win8, 64bit:
Name der fehlerhaften Anwendung: BlackSilk.exe, Version: 0.0.0.0, Zeitstempel: 0x50a8d3ef
Name des fehlerhaften Moduls: unknown, Version: 0.0.0.0, Zeitstempel: 0×00000000
Ausnahmecode: 0xc0000005
Fehleroffset: 0×0000000000000000
ID des fehlerhaften Prozesses: 0xcdc
Startzeit der fehlerhaften Anwendung: 0x01ce24a6010a6bff
Pfad der fehlerhaften Anwendung: C:\Program Files\BlackSilk_Alpha_0.3.0_win64\app\BlackSilk.exe
Pfad des fehlerhaften Moduls: unknown
Berichtskennung: 42dc9a3f-9099-11e2-be73-00025b012f81
Any idea, please?
Grüße,
Robin
(German/Deutsch)
Danke für Ihr Feedback!
Üblicherweise läuft Black Silk auf Windows 8 64bit Systemen. Es gibt aktuell nur eine einzige bekannte Ausnahme: Wenn eine weitere Version von ImageMagick mit einem Installer auf dem Rechner platziert wurde, kann es sein, dass Black Silk abstürzt.
Haben Sie zufällig das ImageMagick-Tool installiert? Das könnte den Absturz erklären. Ansonsten wären noch Grafikkarten-Informationen interessant.
Freundliche Grüße, Jesse Klugmann
Hallo Jesse,
danke für die schnelle Antwort!
Nein ImageMagick ist nicht auf dem ThinkPad T500 installiert. Lediglich zwei Buchcover, die jemand mit dem Tool bearbeitet hat, hat die Suche herausgefunden. Aber alle El Samuko Skripts für GIMP sind installiert…
Die Grafik ist auf dem Board (Mobile Intel(R) 4 Express-Chipsatzfamilie (Microsoft Corporation – WDDM 1.1)), der Treiber ist der aktuellste.
Ansonsten könnte ich noch mit der WER-Datei dienen…
Fehlerbucket -764866985, Typ 5
Ereignisname: BEX64
Antwort: Nicht verfügbar
CAB-Datei-ID: 0
Problemsignatur:
P1: BlackSilk.exe
P2: 0.0.0.0
P3: 50a8d3ef
P4: StackHash_c6d7
P5: 0.0.0.0
P6: 00000000
P7: PCH_41_FROM_ntdll+0x000000000000319B
P8: c0000005
P9: 0000000000000008
P10:
Schöne Grüße,
Rolf
Hallo Rolf,
Leider unterstützen wir Intel Chips erst ab dem HD2000 Chipsatz, da OpenGL-Anwendungen auf älteren Chipsätzen oft problematisch und aufwändig zu warten sind. Mit der nächsten Black Silk-Version wird es einen Kompatibilitätsmodus für ältere Geräte geben, der natürlich dann leider nicht ganz so schnell wie das aktuelle native Rendering sein kann.
Mehr Infos dazu gibt’s dann demnächst im Blog.
Freundliche Grüße, Jesse Klugmann
PS: Schön, dass Du Samuels Skripte nutzt. ;)
Hallo Jesse,
danke – das ist doch mal ein Grund ;-)
Ich warte gerne auf die nächste Version, da BlackSilk für meine Zwecke sehr vielversprechend aussieht!
Und Danke/Gruß an Samuel, seine Skripte sind toll.
Schöne Grüße,
Rolf
The Win 64bit standalone will not start or execute. System Win7 64 all updated, Nvidia latest driver. I tried different compability modes.
Hi Tor,
which nVidia graphics card do you use?
And can you provide us the logfile, which BlackSilk writes to %temp%\BSLog.txt?
Thanks and greetings,
Samuel