Improve your mono photographs

How to create a striking, high–contrast black and white print

REQUIRES

Affinity Photo

YOU WILL LEARN

How to lighten or darken tones, ensure maximum contrast, and add a subtle wash of color

IT WILL TAKE

10 minutes

By making a black and white conversion of a color image, you can help the viewer focus on contrasting shapes in a pic. This works particularly well with the lines and patterns produced by architectural subjects such as our Scottish viaduct here.

A monochrome image harks back to the days of analog film photography, adding a touch of retro class to your shot. They also stand out from the color crowd, which helps them get noticed on social media.

While it’s simple to desaturate a color shot using Affinity Photo, this can result in a muddy wash of greyscale tones. An effective black and white conversion should have a high contrast between the shadows and the highlights to help key subjects stand out.

In the walkthrough, we’ll show you how to use a Levels adjustment layer in Affinity Photo to ensure the contrasting presence of some pure white highlights and jet black shadows in any of your mono makeovers.

In pre–digital days, black and white film photographers could pop colored filters over their camera’s lens to selectively lighten or darken specific areas in the monochrome picture. For example, a red filter would darken blue skies, enabling white clouds to stand out more in contrast. Affinity Photo’s adjustment layers provide similar tools that can help you selectively lighten or darken greyscale tones based on the scene’s original colors.

In our example monochrome conversion, we’ve darkened the blue sky and lightened the sunlit stone to help the viaduct stand out. To change the mood of a monochrome conversion, we’ll also show you how to add a little color. A cyanotype is a mono image with a subtle wash of blue which creates a chilly look. Alternatively, you can add a warm wash of sepia for a nostalgic vibe.