Black & White Conversion

Colour has its beauty, but so does black & white. Sometimes, black and white images create greater impact than colour. If you haven’t seen amazing black & white images of master craftsmen like Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Andreas Feininger and Yousuf Karsh to name a few, then sadly, you haven’t experienced real black & white photography! Those who haven’t worked enough in black & white darkrooms may find creating B&W images in the digital darkroom to be rather difficult than creating colour images. It demands greater knowledge of lighting and the ability on the part of the photographer to visualise the final scene without being unduly influenced by colour. Most digital cameras offer an option to shoot in black & white. While this method is simpler, it’s not the best way either. You would be better off capturing the scene in colour (in Raw) and then converting the same to black & white using Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop. When you record in Raw, your file size will be larger, meaning you’ll record more data. When you record using the in-built B&W feature, the camera still records all the three channels (red, green and blue) but discards most of the data while converting to B&W.

Tip:

Once you convert your colour images to black & white, do not have them printed onto conventional colour paper. If you do so, you may not be fully satisfied because you are likely to see a colour tint in the final images. Instead, go for inkjet printing, which can offer you clean blacks and whites. There are various methods to convert colour images to black & white. Some methods are, to say the least, poor, and some are rather difficult. This article will explain some simple, yet very effective methods to convert your colour images to B&W. I am using Photoshop CS6 but earlier versions can be used too.