Micro Course - Bonus Lesson 14

Black and White Photography in the Modern World

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To understand black & white photography you frst
need to understand a little bit about colour. The pri-
mary colours of light are red, green and blue and
an equal mixture of these will form white light. Our
secondary colours are cyan, magenta and yel-
low. Each of these are opposite to the primary col-
ours and each theoretically cancel the other out.
Recording in black & white provides a representation
of a given colour, but instead of the colour being visible
in the image, only the brightness or tonal value of the
colour remains as a shade of grey or black or white.
The range of tones that can be achieved in a black &
white image is anything from black through various
increasing tones of grey right up to pure white. The
maximum purity of the white achievable depends on
the base white of the paper that you are printing on.
Part of the art of black and white photography is to
understand how the tonal value of colours in a scene
will reproduce as a shade of grey or if they will ap-
pear as black or white. You may expect each colour
to record as a different shade but some colours will
reproduce as very similar shades even though the
colours look completely different to the eye. Filters
that you place in front of the lens, as the flter enhanc-
es or reduces the coloured light that passes through
it, can further affect reproduction. Additionally the
material you are recording the image onto and print-
ing onto can also infuence the fnal black & white
image. When using flm, professional photographers
are aware that each type of black and white flm
gives a different response to certain colours. Most
reproduce a slightly different version of black and
white and photographers have their personal favour-
ites. More serious black and white photographers
would also place colour flters in front of the lens to
increase the contrast and change the tonal range
of their image. The common colour flters applied
for black & white flm photography are either a deep
red, orange, green or a yellow flter. But lets face it,
flm is going the way of the Dodo and the computer
has replaced the darkroom, so what are our options?
In todays digital age we are now capturing images
using sensors that only record in colour, if we want
black and white we convert the image on a com-
puter later. The level of success with this method
largely depends on the conversion techniques
you apply and your understanding of the colours
in the scene. There are a variety of techniques
that you can apply and each can yield a different
result. It is worth noting however that although we
are shooting on colour cameras it is still possible
to infuence the effect of the fnal black and white
conversion at the capture stage by using flters.
Admittedly, having tested the technique
of different colour flters on RGB capture,
I would say the results vary in degree of success and
in most cases with the right knowledge you can ad-
just an RGB colour image very precisely using good
black and white conversion methods in your soft-
ware. However I have had interesting results using
a green flter on a colour digital camera and would
also highly recommend using a polarising flter for
most of your black and white landscape photogra-
phy. Polarising flters increase the richness of col-
our and contrast in your image, which in turn means
that your software has richer colour information to
play with when making a black & white conversion.
But lets learn a bit about colour frst, to help
your understanding I have included a chart; the
top half of the wheel below shows our primary
colours of RED, GREEN and BLUE. The bot-
tom half of our wheel shows the secondary col-
ours of YELLOW, MAGAENTA and CYAN.
Each opposite colour would cancel the other out
for example Red is the opposite colour of Cyan and
Blue is the opposite colour of Yellow. Combining two
of the primary colours forms the secondary colours.
For example combining Red and Green light would
create yellow. Combining Blue and Green light would
create Cyan and combining Blue and Red would
create Magenta. If you were to combine opposite
colours you would create Black. If you combined all
3 primary colours you would create white light. If you
combined all 3 secondary colours with subtractive
mixing using optical flters you would create black.
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As an experiment of black & white conversions, I photographed a series of test images
using an RGB colour digital camera (with a CMOS sensor) but I also shot the scene with col-
our flters applied. The flters I used were the traditional colour flters used for black and white flm
and not designed for RGB capture, but I decided it would be an interesting exercise regardless.
1. A straight colour imagewith no flter 2. A straight colour image, with a Polarising flter
3. An Orange flter attached to the front of the lens 4. A Red flter 5. A Green flter 6. A Blue flter.
Primary Colours
Secondary Colours
Green
Blue
Red
Yellow
Magenta
Cyan

Heres what they look like with a simple greyscale
conversion in Photoshop CS4.
1 1 - greyscale conversion
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2 2 - greyscale conversion
3 3 - greyscale conversion
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4 4 - greyscale conversion
5 5 - greyscale conversion
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6 6 - greyscale conversion
Each image was then loaded into Photoshop and converted to greyscale mode (the most simplistic
method of creating a black & white image). I then decided to convert the original colour image (with no
flters) using the black and white adjustment layer (a more versatile method of conversion) but this time
manually adjusting the tonal range using the Photoshop colour sliders in the black and white conver-
sion palette. In each case I was able to eventually achieve a very similar result to the standard greys-
cale conversions taken with the colour flters, therefore proving that using colour flters during RGB
capture is rather futile. It was, however, more diffcult to achieve as good a result as the image taken us-
ing the polarising flter and I would also add that a straight black & white conversion from an RGB im-
age with the green flter applied gave a more appealing starting point in this test. Although further exper-
imentation on different scenes at different times of day would be required to reveal any overall beneft.
Some digital SLRs have a monochrome mode where you can preview the image on the LCD screen
in black & white. This capture mode is not a true black and white capture only a conversion preview of
the colour fle, but still useful for checking results when trying different flters for black and white.
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Conversion using black and white adjustment layer Conversion using black and white adjustment layer
In practical terms most of us will be shooting normal colour fles in order to capture a good colour image
and then wanting to make the best conversion possible. So lets take a look at some of the techniques you
could use in Photoshop CS4 to make good black and white conversions from a standard colour image.
The frst and most obvious is to use a black and white adjustment layer, this will provide you a colour palette (fg.
1.1) whereby you can adjust the brightness value of a given colour in your scene and reproduce it as a different
shade of grey. By using the colour selector slider you can physically place your mouse on your image and slide
it to see the effect on a given colour. When using this technique I like to make a separate copy of the colour im-
age and keep it open on my desktop in another window as a reference to where certain colours are in the scene.
By using an adjustment layer instead of an actual action you can fick the layer on and off to check your results.
Often you will fnd as you adjust your image colour values certain parts of the picture look bet-
ter in black and white at one setting while other parts look better at another setting. If this is the
case I create a new black and white layer for each of my favourite parts of the image and name
the layer accordingly then rub through the layers afterwards to reveal the best part of each one.
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1.1 Black and white adjustment layer palette 1.2 Channel mixer adjustment layer palette
The Channel Mixer adjustment layer (fg. 1.2) can also be used for
creating black and white images by checking the monochrome box and
mixing the channels at various percentages to yield different results. In
the tab at the top of the palette is a useful drop down menu that applies a
similar effect to using the colour flters on black and white flm that I men-
tioned earlier. Again creating new layers with different percentages and
then blending the required areas can achieve more personalised results.
Another interesting technique that I learnt from a fellow photog-
rapher is to apply two Hue and Saturation layers (fg. 1.3) to your
image, set the top layer to the layer blend mode colour and set
the saturation to -100. On the bottom layer you can then ad-
just the hue slider to recreate the effect of a multitude of colour fl-
ters in conjunction with the saturation slider. Again saving new fat-
tened layers from your favourite results and blending them later.
With the new Camera Raw palette in CS4 (accessed through Bridge)
(fg. 1.4) you will fnd a greyscale conversion tab that offers a very
versatile control panel with an additional tab for creating split tone im-
ages (sepia effects etc.) On the greyscale conversion palette there are
more colour sliders than the black & white adjustment option in Pho-
toshop (dont ask me why?) these extra sliders give you slightly more
versatility in your conversion but you are unable to work on layered
fles and are restricted to working with a fattened tiff, jpeg or RAW fle.
1.3 Hue/Saturation layers
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1.4 Camera Raw palette, greyscale conversion tab
Other tips you might fnd useful with practise are to create a gradient map (fg. 1.5) on top of your black
and white conversion allowing you to map a specifc tonal range over the whole image by pre-selecting
which tone you want to go where (fg. 1.6) this can be useful for adding a boost of contrast to parts
of your image by history brushing away areas you dont require or if you applied this is an adjustment
layer you could apply a mask to select the areas you wish to retain and remove. To fully understand this
process I advise you read about layer masks and gradient mapping in Photoshop and related manuals.
1.5
1.6
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For a fnal contrast boost to your black and white conversions I fnd the Unsharp
Mask flter (fg. 1.7) at a setting of about 20/50 (for a 22MegaPixel Image) very
effective, then use the edit > fade slider to adjust the image to suit. A setting
of 15 percent and 20 pixels would be more appropriate on a 12MP camera.
Finally and most importantly dont forget that all of the above is totally irrelevant
if the image you have captured doesnt work. I dont believe a bad colour im-
age will be miraculously saved by converting it to black and white! Black and
white photography is still photography and capturing a creative image is still key.
1.7
Channel mixer in monochrome with
black and white orange flter applied
Four black and white adjustment layers, merged
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