I need help on how to save this photo.

[iND]

I just got back from an Italian vacation.
I was taking a water taxi along with my 50D and 70-200 f4 when this storm popped up on trip from Venice to Murano.
First Venice tornado in 30 years.
I have about 30 frames and my idea is to convert it to black and white.
There was no color during the storm as the sky was gray and dark.
I have tried some photoshop conversion, but the problem is that there is very little contrast.
The whole scene is like a 25% gray card.

I would really appreciate some suggestion on how to salvage it.
I have not tried silver effects pro yet

settings
ISO 320 1/800 f8.0 154m

2 hours later look at the sky

[Joel Eade]

An amazing scene! Was this shot as a jpeg? There is alot of banding and chromatic aberration in the sky and clouds.

Silver Efex Pro would be a good thought....scroll through all the presets and if get close to what you want then tweak the sliders from there.

In photoshop you can use a curves adjustment to increase contrast. Also a selective color adjustment by increasing the black slider in the neutrals might help too.

If you have a RAW image it will be best to start with it rather than a jpeg.

[jrw]

Not sure what you are using to process. Many applications allow you to adjust the conversion to B&W from the 3 individual colour channels. Always easier to do if starting with RAW file. JPEG processing is frequently more limited in post-processing.

[Dr Croubie]

Hope you don't mind, but i've just had a play with the small one you posted there.
Nothing too complicated, in GIMP i hit the 'desaturate' based on luminosity.
Then just value curves, bring the black point up and the white point down, darken all the lows to black-out the coastline and define the top of the tornado, darken the upper-highs a bit for that 'foreboding sky' look, and bring the midrange up for some detail.

So here's what it looks like (has that crappy quantized look because I'd just edited the jpg you posted). But it should give you somewhere to start: