It was only a few years ago that professional and amateur photographers had to make a crucial decision at the beginning of a day of shooting regarding what kind of film they would shoot. Color film? Black & White? Slide film? Today, we can save those decisions until days or even weeks after we capture an image, and decide whether the final product will be a color or black & white digital photograph. While this can make processing more complicated, it also opens up another layer of creative choice that we used to have to make in advance.
Capturing the Image
The first step is image capture. Even if you choose a monochrome setting in camera, as long as you shoot in RAW, all of the color information will remain in the photo’s file, untapped. Of course, the reverse is also true. In the field you might be intent on capturing a beautiful color landscape image, but upon reflection, a conversion to black and white might be your ultimate choice. Occasionally, I will get a client who asks if I can print a given color image in black and white, or vice versa, and I am able to make that happen.
This photo of the Marching Men in Arches National Park is a great example of an image that works well in color and black & white. It is all about personal preference.
Lightroom Processing
When I process images in Lightroom, I often hit the ‘Black & White’ button to temporarily convert the image. For me, this serves two purposes. First, it is often helpful to see an image in grayscale in order to adjust contrast, shadows, highlights and brightness. A super colorful image can sometimes obscure these details, and in fact I may work in black & white for several steps before restoring the color. As long as I work in RAW, the Lightroom ‘Black & White’ and ‘Color’ buttons toggle color information on and off, non-destructively. Once I have the tonal range I want, I can restore the color to see the final image.
The second reason I convert to black & white is that it can reveal something about the image that more powerfully conveys the scene, and it helps me decide if in the end it will be a black & white digital photograph.
Silver Efex Pro
Once I have decided to create a black & white image, and have the image adjusted for contrast and exposure in Lightroom, my next step for image processing happens within Photoshop Elements – specifically with the Silver Efex Pro plug-in. Silver Efex Pro 2 is an incredibly powerful and versatile tool for processing digital images into fantastic black & white images. Originally created as part of the Nik Collection of plug-ins, it was bought by Google. You would think that it would mean it is now more expensive, but the opposite is true. It’s free! (thanks Google!)
Unless the image is intentionally soft or out of focus, the first tool I utilize is the Structure tool, which adds local contrast to the images to really make the details pop. Think of Structure as Lightroom Clarity and Photoshop Midtone Contrast, on steroids. Next I adjust brightness and contract, and can tweak the tonality curve if necessary. Then there are fun and powerful tools like color filters, that mimic the effects of the yellow or red color filters we used to use on the lens for black and white film.
Finally, if you are a fan of Ansel Adams’ Zone System (and who isn’t), there is an interactive graph that visually shows you which parts of the image are in which zones.
Grain & Toning
Speaking of black and white film, there are adjustments that mimic the contrast and grain of several types of black and white film. (Many of which aren’t even made any more!) These are handy if you are trying to match the results of your favorite film, or just trying to add a bit of grain to make the image feel more ‘authentic’.
For a final touch, you can add toning. I added a bit of sepia tone to the heart Lake Dock image, to give it a timeless, Adirondack feel. You can also add Selenium (great for winter scenes like the Kaaterskill Falls photo), copper (nice for red rock country images), and several others, all without the nasty chemicals!
Which Photos Should be Black & White?
I admit, I hold some nostalgia for the days of processing photos in my kitchen darkroom. I spent many late nights dodging and burning, watching images slowly revel themselves in developer, working to get that perfect print. Because of that experience, a black & white image sometimes reveals itself to me in a color digital image. Printing in black & white is obviously a personal choice, so there is no right and wrong about which images should be color or not.
Take the rock cairns photo above. When I capture an image with a lot of great texture, like that in the sandstone cairns, it is often complemented in black & white. In the color version, the dark green trees in the background are a bit distracting to me. When I covert it to black & white, the texture pops (using Structure in Silver Efex Pro), and the focus on the foreground rock cairn, rather than the background trees.
Conclusion
Like most things in photography, you will learn much more by doing and repetition than by just reading a blog. Go out, shoot some images, and play with converting them to black and white. Go back to some of your favorite shots that contain good contrast and interesting textures, and play with converting them as well. Make color and black & white prints of the same photo to see how they turn out (and play with different papers while you are at it. My favorite papers are rag papers for black & white). Finally, if you have never worked in a darkroom, your Lightroom skills will improve immeasurably if you take a darkroom printing course.
As always, I’d love to hear your comments. What topics should I address next?