*Edit – it seems the lightbox can manage it.

This photo is exposure bracketed, tone-mapped and a b&w adjustment layer applied.

Canon EOS 400D, Sigma 10-20, ISO-100, f/22, shutter 1/8, 2, 1/2 sec.

I’m not a photographer by any means, it’s just something I enjoy. However; I thought I’d write a post on taking black & white photos and what I feel is the best way to approach this using a DSLR.

I know a lot of people who shoot in JPEG and use the on-board processing to covert the image to black & white however personally I have found post processing to black & white to be more effective. Some people will debate that the on-board processing takes in to account white balance, exposure, and and so on but it’s all about personal preference isn’t it?

If I’m shooting in JPEG – I  always shoot in colour and convert it to black & white using Photoshop or something similar. Using the on-board processing means all the colour data is lost when the image is written to the card; if you want to change the photo or wish you’d taken it in colour you won’t be able to go back.

If I’m shooting in RAW, it saves the colour data as well as some information it uses for the black & white (from what I can gather) regardless of whether you’re previewing it in black & white or colour. This can be handy if you want to see what it might look like in black and white.

One thing that I like about about black & white photography is that low contrast photos often look good – so some cloudy / overcast days when you think you won’t go take photos because of the lighting, you could still go and attempt some black & shots.

The photo I’m using as a demonstration was taken recently on the Yarra in Melbourne, the same evening as Dusk Reflections I’m not sure who actually took the photo.

I’m using Photoshop CS4 using the latest RAW codec, the photo was taken on a EOS D550, f/10 ISO-100 1/100 sec. with a sigma 10-20mm

I’m going to touch on 4 methods. 2 methods that give you control over the results and 2 that do not – the blog distorts the images – click through for the full versions

There is the the original:

Gradient Map

This method applies a black & white gradient to the brightness of your photo. This is the method I’ve played with most.

Reset your colours to black (foreground) white (background) – they are usually set like this by default

Add a gradient map adjustment layer

You will see the gradient apear in the “adjustments panel” as below and your image will now be black & white:

You can now make adjustments to your image using the gradient editor

Click on the gradient you see in the adjustments panel as pictures above and the following window will popup:

This controls the gradient, you can adjust it simply by clicking either of the colour stops. You will see a little diamond apear under the gradient bar in the centre. You can adjust the darkness by moving the black colour box on the left, adjust the brightness by using the white on the right, you can adjust the midtones by moving the marker in the center. Finally you can add additional colour stops as you’ll see below  (I’ve exaggerated the effect in the photo to use as an example):

 Grayscale

To convert an image to grayscale simply click on the image menu, go to -> mode and click discard, this will ditch all the colour information – don’t forget to make copies of your images before you work on them! You’ll get the following results:

Desaturation

The next easy method is desaturation. To achieve this simply click image -> adjustmensts -> Hue/Saturation and move the saturation slider to -100. Again you have no real control over the results but you will end up with the following:

Black & White Adjustment Layer

This method gives you presice control as you can manually adjust all the tones.

Click on Layer -> new adjustment layer -> black and white – then click okay. You should see the following toolbox

Move each slider left or right to lighten or darken the respective tone, you can also click the little hand slider icon and hold on the selected image and the tone that’s selected will be adjusted, here are some examples:

The following settings:

Produced a darkened sky

The following settings:

Produced a lighter image:

There are many more ways to convert a photo to black & white I believe, It’s probably important to experiment and see what you like. As I said it’s not about being professional for me – it’s about the satisfaction of taking a photo and being proud of it, being able to have full control over the results is something I like to play with.

I think the powerplant is a Chevrolet big-block 396 CI (6.5L) I don’t have many other specs on the car at this stage, hopefully I’ll be able to fill it out more soon when I add a couple more photographs.