Teach yourself Black & White Photography

Since the earliest days of photography, producing stunning black-and-white images has required a combination of shooting and darkroom skills. For the best results, you need to master being able to visualise the world in black and white, and also know how to manipulate an image for maximum impact. Despite the many changes in how we shoot and manipulate images having moved on from film, many of the basic skills are still the same. The real difference is the time it takes; the shooting and developing process that once took days can now be mastered in a few hours. So we’ve come up with a set of tasks, from simple shooting to controlling contrast and tones, that will take between 30 minutes and a couple of hours. Follow these tasks, and…

“When looking for a subject, keep an eye out for tones and contrast, rather than colours” We are so used to seeing the world in colour that it can be difficult to get to grips with how everything will look when converted to black and white. So, if you are struggling to see in monochrome, try setting your camera’s picture mode to black and white, then simply get out and take some photos. Using this picture mode will give you the ability to instantly review your images in black and white to see if they work or not, and how the different colours convert into monochrome tones. For even quicker feedback you can also see the scene in black and white by switching to Live View mode. If you don’t…

Your camera’s built-in filter effects hark back to the settings used in traditional black-andwhite film photography, where coloured lens filters were used to change how colours appeared in an image. But the names and effects can be confusing to those new to black-and-white photography. Each filter lightens the colour specified by its name, and also darkens the opposite colours. So, for example, a red filter lightens any red areas, but darkens the blues. Here’s a quick guide to the filter options – what they do and when to use them... YELLOW Lightens yellow and slightly darkens blues. Use it for Lightening skin tones or adding contrast to white clouds against a blue sky. RED Lightens reds and darkens strong blues to almost black. Use it for Adding maximum contrast to…

The biggest problem with in-camera black and white is that contrasting colours can end up with a similar tonal value in your images. There are a number of ways to change the way that individual colours are converted into black and white, including in-camera filter effects (see page 11), but the best way to learn is by using the black-andwhite adjustment tools in either Elements, Photoshop CS or CC. These adjustment tools enable you to use sliders to control how individual colours are converted into black-and-white tones. Darkening or lightening the tones of these colours can transform your final result compared to a more basic conversion. To use these tools you’ll need to use a colour original, so you should either turn off the black-andwhite picture mode on your camera,…

Although the preset options are designed for specific subjects, such as portraits and landscapes, it’s often worth trying them on any type of image before you start adjusting the colour sliders, as they will give a good starting point for your conversion. PORTRAIT This preset converts the image so that the reds are slightly darker than the greens and blues. SCENIC LANDSCAPE With this preset the conversion sliders are set so that the blues are darker and reds are lighter. CUSTOM SETTINGS While the preset values give a good starting point for your conversions, you can also drag the individual sliders to fine-tune the results for your subject. For our flower shot, we wanted to darken the petals a bit, so we dragged the Red slider left until the majority…

While the individual colour adjustments will give you control over the final tones of your black-and-white photos, they aren’t the only way that you can control them in your final image. Once you have converted your images, you can also use either Levels or Curves adjustment layers to fine-tune the contrast and tones in your black-and-white shots. Curves adjustment layers aren’t available in Elements, so you’ll have to use Levels. Using Curves This adjustment enables you to make more subtle changes to your images than with Levels, because you can lighten or darken specific parts of the histogram, rather than the three fixed points available in Levels. You can click any point along the diagonal line in the adjustment window, and drag it down to darken these tones, or up…