Photography Magazine

Being a black and white buff doesn’t always mean that you have to use film. Modern digital cameras are more than capable of shooting black and white files. Well, that is one way to create digital black and white photographs. The other method would be to first shoot in the normal color mode of your digital and then convert the file to black and white using an editing software. The only downside to the latter method is the fact that you will need to invest in an editing software (lets face it - no decent software is available free of charge). However, using post production techniques to get digital black and white images is by far the better option…for various reasons.

The most obvious advantage would be that you have a color back up. Not every photograph looks ‘better’ or ‘more suited to one’s liking’. When you have a color photograph you could always convert it to black and white at a later stage, maybe experiment with the file to see if the monotone version suits the subject. When you shoot in black and white you have already committed to using that version and there is no way you will be able to reproduce the colors if you wish for it later. Also, when you shoot using the black and white mode of the camera, you are recording only about 256 shades, whereas you are able to record thousands of shades on color. Starting with a color file, you would much better and more easily be able to give the black and white filter effects to the color file (black and white filter effects dealt with in a separate article).

 

To convert a digital file to a monotone, you should get your self a good editing software. We highly recommend that you stick to using Adobe’s Photoshop software for the simple reason that it is a world standard imaging software, and studios and photographers are constantly exchanging and working with the .psd format files. Once you have the file open in Photoshop, all you need to do is change it to monotone using the commands -

Go to the IMAGE menu - select MODE and sub select GREYSCALE

OR

IMAGE — ADJUST — DESURATE

OR

 

IMAGE — ADJUST — HUE/SATURATION (make saturation null)

 

The first option is the simplest to understand, while the second and third have their own applications when you need to create sepia images etc. Once you are familiar with converting images to black and white on the computer, you will no doubt opt to do things this way rather than shoot in color on the camera. You will be able to make convenient comparisons between the color and BW versions of your photographs and then begin to learn what kind of images look better in the monotone format.

 

Once you learn a bit more on Photoshop you will also be able to convert isolated areas of an image to black and white (very common technique in jewelery ads) and add lighten or darken selective color areas on the B/W version. The latter technique is exactly what is achieved on B/W film using color filters.