How to Make Black and White Photos || convert image to black and white photoshop

How to Make Black and White Photos || convert image to black and white photoshop

Hi, I'm deepak and in this blog I'll be
teaching the basics of digital black

and white photography

and processing. First off, I'd like to
start with some basic theory you'll need to

know before you start taking your black and
white photos.

I've noticed that a lot of people think
you can just take any picture,

make it monochrome and suddenly you have
a more artistic photo

and a better photo. But that's not really
true. Black and white photography looks

better a lot of the time because it
forces you to look at the form in your

photo rather than color.

Soit can enhance the photo if you have
the right elements there.

Some basic compositional theories
that you'll need to know before going

into it

are the rule of thirds, the rule of space
and the angle of view.

Without those basic compositional
elements

no ammount of processing is going to make
your picture look better. If you forgot

some of those theories go to chapter two of our book,
composition,

and they're right there. You can brush up on
them before you start taking more

pictures.

Another part of black and white photo
theory is

learning to think in monochrome. So when
you're taking your picture, shift your

attention away from colors

and start looking at form and texture.
Like crackling paint or

old weathered wood. When you're looking
at these tonal contrasts in different

textures, you're going to be taking pictures
that look good

once they're converted to black and
white. My first technical tips

are really easy: shoot RAW and use the
lowest ISO possible.

You'll be shooting RAW because with the
raw file its easier to

bring down highlights in your pictures

and bring up underexposed parts of your
pictures without being too grainy or

without too much noise.

You want to use a low ISO for the same
reason.

You don't want a lot of noise and the
lower the ISO

the lower the amount of noise in your
picture. Black and white photography

tends to kinda

exaggerate any noise in your photo. Let's
go into my photo editing software

and I'll show you examples of a good
time to use black and white photography

and bad times to use black and white
photography. Now I'm using Lightroom 4

I'm certain there are many other photo
editing softwares that will work just

fine,

as long as they have this option where
you can go to black and white and then

mix your colors. That's all you'll need.

This example is a picture of food.

A picture of tuna made by my favorite chef, Chris Rowe.

It looks beautiful in color, it looks
appetizing, but as soon as you shift it to

black and white,

you start focusing on the form in the photo, which is

not so appetizing. Another bad time to
use black and white photography

is if the soft colors and tones

set a mood in the photo, like this
Christmas picture that I took of my

daughter,

Madelyn. When I convert it to black and
white,

it loses that soft, ethereal effect, for
me anyway. Maybe some people prefer it

but her skin looks a bit washed out,
there's not much contrast

and it's a bit uninteresting. Even
adjusting the colors doesn't do much.

The red channel kind of darkens her
lips and her skin and makes it look

ruddy. If I add too much contrast

the orange will do the same thing, she
looks

way to tan to be natural there, and when I
slide up the slider to create contrast

everything just gets washed away. I prefer this picture in color. Now let's get to a

good time to use

black and white photography. This picture
of pumpkins

I took during a little road trip to
Vermont.

Now, you might think that the color looks
good but in my opinion

the orange really overwhelms the photo.
WhatI liked about this picture

is the rustic setting, you can see the
word here on the sides very weathered

and the pumpkins just have so much
texture and when you convert it to black and

white

and focus on the form of the pumpkins,
the picture takes on a whole new meaning.

One important tip when you have a black
and white photo is to make sure that you

actually have

white in the picture and black in the
picture. So you can see here there's some

dark deep shadows that are black and
there are some highlights that are

pretty much fully white. This picture of Tony
in Edinburgh, Scotland

is a great example of how black and
white photography

can really change a photo. So,

when I look at it in black and white I
see a silhouette

I see him walking through this beautiful
arched doorway and just kind of a vague

background.

When I convert to colour, my attention is

immediately shifted to the green between
the two buildings and

I notice that there's a person in the
background and a sign

that seems to steal a bit of the attention.
In this instance, changing the photo to

black and white

focuses on one form in the picture
making the subject

more identifiable. I took this picture of
my daughter one night

while we were walking in a snowstorm so
my ISO was really high,

12,800, and this picture is really
noisy it shows it.

This is a time when converting to black
and white would be a bad idea because

as you can see

as soon as I change it to black and
white, the noise becomes

even more obvious. That is a good reason
to keep your ISO low

and if you have a picture that's especially
noisy, it's probably not a good time

to convert it to black and white.

Unless less that's a look that you're going
for. Now this picture was taken in

Copenhagen, Denmark

and it's actually not a picture that I
like converted to black and white, but

it's a great example to show you

how this mixer works. You can drastically
change your photo by playing with

these colors sliders here. You can see
that

when I change the red I can make it
dark

or make it lighter. This is important
because it creates a lot of contrast in

your picture and you have control over
making your subject stand out more

or less. So,

if I wanted you to see less of the
flags, I would make them lighter.

If I wanted you to see more of them, I
would make them darker.

Let's play with the orange here and
see what that does. The orange channel is

bringing out the roof.

Or making and dark.

Against the the light sky, I would
probably go with the roof being a little

bit darker.

It brings it out a bit more and it brings
out the structure of the buildings.

So you can see, just by playing with the
colors in your black and white photo

or the color channels rather, since
they're not colors anymore,

you can drastically change what your
picture looks like.

This picture that I took of a boat house in
Lyme is a great example of how

black and white photography brings out
form and composition.

When this picture's in color I feel
like

my eyes are fighting with it a bit, there's
a bit too much going on. We've got this

tuft of grass here,

the boathouse, the background, the sky.
There's a lot going on,

my eye doesn't really wanna rest on
anything.

I already converted the photo to black
and white

and you can see that it anchors your eye a
little bit. You've got these two subjects

you're not distracted by the color of
the boathouse,

the red was a bit bright, and you can
really focus on the form,

the reflections and just the
peacefulness

of the scene. So I thought this was a great photo
in black and white.

So now that you've seen me convert some
of my color photos to black and white

and adjust the color mixer some, it might
help you better understand the theorys

that I talked about at the beginning of
the video and maybe even help you with

your processing.

Don't forget the basics that I taught
you: shoot RAW and use the lowest ISO

possible.

And don't forget black and white
photography is really about form

and texture and composition.

I'm not good at rebounding from a mistake,
it always ends in a song.

do do do dit dit do do do dit dit

(scat singing)

(singing) this is where things get crazy

I'm a loser! Get it together, Chelsea.
Parameter

extrapolater. I definitely made that up.
Bluh bluh bleh bleh.

This is hard. You wanna put on a wig and just sit here?

Do what I say, I have a blog!

#How to Make Black and White Photos
#convert image to black and white photoshop