You might have lots of black and white photos captured in the days of black and white film cameras or just captured in black and white. Are you interested in colorizing these images?
If yes, you will definitely find this article very useful as it describes all the options you have for performing this task.
… Continue reading How Are Colorized Photos Made? All Your Options
Great black and white photography is stunning. It’s eye catching, emotive, and expressive. Usually, it’s also wonderfully simple. So is still life photography.
In this article, I’ll give you seven tips on how to create stunning black and white still life photographs.
… Continue reading 7 Awesome Tips for Black and White Still Life Photography
In the digital age, color accompanies most of the images we come across during our daily lives. So when it’s intentionally missing, as is the case with artistic black and white photography, people take notice. Monochrome photography is popular in the fine arts for a variety of reasons, many of which come down to how it emphasizes different aesthetic components than color photography: texture, tone, contrast, lighting, and form.
In this article you’ll learn some essential factors to consider when looking for the best black and white photo printer.
… Continue reading How to Choose the Best Black and White Photo Printer
Black and white conversion is a mysterious process. There are many ways to do it and none is objectively any better than any other for every photo. So, these are guidelines, really, in the spirit of a recipe. But unlike following a recipe for baking a cake, we are not all trying to create the same photo. Keep in mind that every photo is different and will require slightly different values for any image editing technique.
Here’s a photo I took on a hike recently with my kids:
To compare with the channel mixer conversions below, first I’ll show the results from a simple average color desaturation. This is a simple conversion, it’s fast, and it’s very easy to do. In Photoshop it’s Image | Adjustments | Desaturate. In GIMP it’s Color | Desaturate.
Many people, myself included, feel that this method often results in lifeless photos. If you’re going to convert this way, you’ll be doing yourself a favor if you also boost the contrast after the fact:
I think the simplicity of just desaturating a photo and boosting the contrast has a lot of appeal.
… Continue reading Black and White Conversion: Channel Mixer Recipes
One of my most frequently commented on posts is the little tutorial Black and White with a Splash of Colour. Well, I’ve just discovered a new super easy way of achieving the technique for those of you with an iPod Touch or iPhone. A little, at the moment free, app called ColorCanvas which couldn’t make it any simpler to create black and white photos with a little colour. I’ve been playing with it on my iPod Touch and it works pretty well. You simply import a photo from your library (or take one if you have an iPhone) and ColorCanvas will convert it to black and white automatically. Then wherever you touch on the screen turns back to colour. It takes a bit of practice to be accurate with the edges but you can vary the brush size and zoom in on the photo to make it easier. There’s the option to vary the opacity too.
I’ve just downloaded a whole bunch of free photography apps for my iPod and I’ll be trying them out on the 8 hours of train journeys I have this weekend so I’ll let you know if any good ones turn up.
… Continue reading Black and White with a Splash of Colour – iPod style
Sometimes a photo just looks better in black and white. You know, from time to time you’ll be digitally rifling through a folder of photographs and there’ll be one or two that just don’t suit being in glorious technicolour. So what to do? Well here are a few tips:
1. Don’t write the photo off just because it doesn’t work in colour. It may look fantastic in black and white.
2. Don’t just convert to greyscale or desaturate. This will most likely look boring and low contrast. Most programs (including free ones like Picasa) have some kind of “filtered black and white” option (in Photoshop this is the channel mixers). This allows you to select a colour filter (some programs will have more choices than others) which will let you keep much more of the detail in your photo. Play around with the different filters and see which ones work best for your photo.
3. Play with the photo in colour first. Before you convert to black and white do any corrections e.g. red eye removal,
First of all, let me get something off my chest. I’m not picking on this book in particular, but generally, when will photography book authors quit talking about digital photography like it’s some crazy new thing that people need to be gently introduced to? Why does every photo book have an “introduction to digital” section that is all but useless filler? It’s 2008 people! If I wanted an introduction to digital photograhy, I’d have bought an introduction to digital photography book. Ok, rant over.
Read on to learn more about the book and find out how you can get a free copy.
Mercifully, The Art of Black and White Photography by Torsten Andreas Hoffmann keeps the intro to digital section to a mere 9 pages.
The meat of this book starts in section two. Section two devotes a full chapter to each of many different genres and concepts and attempts to show by example how to make black and white photographs.
Topics include overcoming clichés, architecture, portraits, street photography, and moods. Arguably, these are all topics that apply equally well to color photography.
… Continue reading Review: The Art of Black and White Photography
One of the techniques people most often ask me to teach them is making a photograph like the one on the right that is black and white with one other colour.
There are a few ways to achieve this effect but here are two ones I find easiest for Photoshop users.
… Continue reading Black and White with a Splash of Color Photosop Tutorial
