Better black & white on phones
Want a smarter way to convert images to black & white on your phone? Jo Bradford has written several books on editing with the free app, Snapseed, so here’s her in-depth guide
Colour can create a sort of ‘blindness’ to texture and tone, and this is where monochrome can be employed to enhance it. When it comes to undertaking a monochrome conversion in Snapseed, a great free smartphone editing app for iOS and Android, the simplest method for doing it is with the ‘Black & White’ filter tool itself. But simplest is not always best. Although it does a fine job, any photographer with an eye to printing their work later would be wise to avoid it because this is just a filter effect – an overlay that will essentially degrade the quality of your image. This degradation is due to the small pixel dimensions that the filter itself has. Filters like this are designed to be overlaid on images that are only intended to be viewed on screen.
Here, I will show how to do it properly and create images that have your own unique black & white style rather than the same bolt-on filter that makes everyone’s photo look the same as everyone else’s. As every image will possess its own strengths and weaknesses, it’s best practice to apply a black & white conversation in a bespoke fashion, thereby making only the adjustments that the image needs. A far better method for converting your photos into black & white in Snapseed is to harness the flexible power of the Tune Image tool. When it comes to editing, always keep in mind that less is more – so try to approach this knowing it’s best to do less, in order to do more.
A mist opportunity
This image looked almost monochrome to begin with as it was shot in early morning light. The thick swirling mist parted briefly to reveal the rowers and swan on the canal.
When changing to a monochrome palette, the image’s underlying structure is easier to appreciate. In the following steps we will be using Snapseed’s simple adjustment system to enhance the photograph with the Tune Image sliders for Saturation/Brightness/ Contrast/Shadows and Highlights and add some finesse with the Details tool. When all this is brought to the forefront, the tonal range from black to white, with a rich assortment of greys in between, becomes the main feature of the photo – without any distracting colours reducing its impact for the viewer.