Digital Photography and Black and White Photographs : Tips

Digital Photography and Black and White Photographs demands extra precaution and Tips as Digital Camera’s Sensor is actually intended for color Photography. Using Adobe Photoshop rightly as a tool for Post Processing also requires extra steps, its actually not that, making it automatically one click gray-scale gives the best result.

Digital Photography and Black and White Photographs : Tips For the Camera and Photography

As it is Digital Photography, the topic can be made easy by splitting in to two parts. We do not recommend to use the on camera Black and White mode as solo photo. Instead, either grab two photographs (one color and one Black and White) or just the color.

Images are two-dimensional reality. If the colors in the scene to be replaced by different shades of gray, from White to Black, enter the other aspects of the photo – shape, lighting, contrast , texture, tone. The following are the factors are presented that determine success and failure in black and white images.

What motivates are for black and white photos ? 

If the scene is already sober anyway, you can make a boring snapshot into an interesting landscape, simply by changing the colors. Or you can tinkle on the nostalgia thing of the past. Black and white photos give a nostalgic, sentimental mood, which with color photos is inconceivable.

Contrast and brightness range

The contrast and the brightness range of monochrome images can be pointed to a way or minimized, which is totally impossible for color images. This applies to image processing software as well as the traditional darkroom. High-contrast scenes (large range between light and dark) draw the viewer’s attention on a single element, with low contrast scenes (close brightness range) provides peace and it is quiet and calm by nature. In connection with the black and white photography, also frequently the terms “high brightness range” (predominantly light tones) and “low brightness scale” (predominantly dark tones) are used. “Contrast” and “Brightness Ratio” are not synonyms. A photo may have a low contrast, and yet have a large brightness range, for example, a photo of a blue-eyed girl against a white background.

Structure, lines and form

Maybe your son is wearing a sweater with an interesting weave. Or the leaves of your houseplant have an interesting structure. Imagine how the complete lack of color emphasizes the structure and how the visual appearance of the picture get changed. Lines and shapes draw you into a way of black and white images which in color images is not possible to highlight. A winding fence, corn plants lined up in a field or rock layers in a cliff – all have strong lines, accentuated by the removal of all colors.

Lighting

If you remove the colors, the light takes a much larger role in your image. Imagine a weathered picket fence with an old barn in the background. Wait for a cloudy or even foggy day when the light conjures a gentle, romantic landscape. To emphasize the structure of the fence, you might love to take the picture in the late afternoon when the sun is above the horizon and the long fence is casting dark shadows. This image conveys a completely different mood.

Digital Photography and Black and White Photographs : Tips For Adobe Photoshop

When you are converting a digital photography product to black and white; several points needs to be considered as if taking the above points in mind and reversing the time of capture. For this, you have to duplicate the layers; decrease the color saturation to vanish the color, flatten or merge it; adjust the brightness and contrast. Sometimes rendering filters are required for enhancement.