Digital Black and White Photography – an easy way to produce magnificent black and white photos

Seeing the world with full color is common for mostly people. Therefore, presenting the photographs in black and white form would be unusual at the first time by mostly photographers. However, once the photographers try digital black and white photography correctly, they will be interested and love it with the results.

The monochrome or digital black and white photography is much different than colorful world photography. It is different in color tone; forms and textures which are merged together without any color influence. Bright and dark becomes the main element in producing superb black and white photographs. Besides; manipulation techniques are also needed to produce a good printing photograph in black and white photography.

By digital camera, producing digital black and white photography is easier and faster in computer. Colorful photography can be easily converted to impressive black and white photographs without loosing their quality by manipulating them using image editing tools in the computer such as Adobe Photoshop.

With Adobe Photoshop, you can convert your digital color images to the superb digital black and white photos. Contrast and tone adjustments can be done accurately, while the dark room process which was complicated in the past – can be done easily in the computer with less technical skills.

Why Black and White

Mostly people loves beautiful landscape photography in color. Some people love digital black and white photography due to many reasons including practical reason, and theoretical reason. But the acceptable and good reason is because many people still love it. Black and white or monochrome photos have specific strength and affinity that helps you easily express your mind. Some photography courses and schools teach digital black and white photography earlier to help the students train their eyes to recognize remarkable photo composition.

An example of black and white photo - desaturated from color image

The photo above was taken in color – a mining office in the middle of the Borneo Jungle – then using the Adobe Photoshop the image is retouched by using the desaturated to convert it to black and white photo.

Naturally the eye explores the lines, shapes and curves through the beautiful color photos. The color photos can be quite beautiful, but with digital black and white makes the photo more dynamic. Many professional photographers agree with the following statements.

• Often times color can be distracted, whereas black and white can convey strong feeling and emotion.
• Images lacking a full spectrum of colors. See also soft photo coloring and contrast photo coloring.
• Photographs shot on dark overcast days result in low contrast images
• Any photo subjects with the lines, contours, shadows and curves will look great in black and white. Get accustomed with the a variety of black and white images such as learning how Ansel Adams produced magnificent black and white images.

Create Black & White Photography with a Photoshop

The easiest way to capture the subject in black and white is by setting your digital camera to Black and White and shoot it. However, when you are familiar with the image editing tools such Adobe Photoshop, you’ll find that creating black and white photos would be even better by shooting the subjects in color first and then de-saturating it. Another added benefit to this method is that you’ll never accidentally take a day’s worth of pictures in black and white because you forgot to reset the camera!

Digital white balance setting would take important role in producing black and white photos. By having good white balance in the photographs, you can control how the primary colors work together to produce grayscale brightness, then a simple de-saturation process may be all you need to do in Photoshop.

Make Sure to Use Your Photo Editing Software’s Color Swatches

Color swatches in Photoshop can be helpful in digital black and white photography, even though there are no colorful tones in black and whites. Color swatches work a lot like the way color lenses work on a SLR camera. For instance, camera filters in the yellow to orange range look great with skin tones while green adds wonderful natural tones to outdoors pictures.

By Ki Grinsing

See also:

• Guidelines in photographing in night – nigh photography
• Digital photography tips – for beginner photography
• How to trick the camera exposure for bright and dark background