B&W photos? tips?

Question

I know two ways of creating B&W photos:
1) using the black and white feature on my camera
2) desaturating it in photochop

either way, it ends up being very "flat".

i tried playing with the curves and levels in PS but
it just ends up looking weird/unnatural,

i always see these stunning b&w photos with great contrast and i was wondering how i can achieve that...

or maybe it's cuz im not using a SLR?
i dont know...

Answer 1

This would depend on which version of photoshop you use, not all are created equal in terms of B&W conversion. Photoshop Lightroom, Elements 5 and CS3 all have improved B&W conversion engines with more ways to adjust individual tonal effects and colors. I too am working on my B&W work, have been for months, so I feel your pain bro. I use photoshop lightroom and shoot in RAW, this way I can use the most of the available color information while desaturated. Programs like lightroom that automatically work with RAW files do not discard the color information when desaturating and are known as 'non-destructive' editing programs, retaining the original digital negative as the primary layer. Adjusting the various color sliders can achieve pretty dazzling effects with contrast, especially darker colors like blue, and magenta. That is the main reason for NOT using your camera's B&W option, the camera will discard almost half of the information captured by the image sensor, including the color information, which you wouldn't think would be important to you when desaturating but believe it or not, that color information is crutial to having the ability to create slight color hues in your B&W images. Also, you may want to look into getting an SLR, so you can shoot in RAW format [unless your present camera can do so], believe me, despite most peoples intimidation with using that format, you'll love how much image information is retained. Once you learn how to use it with the right tools, it's easy and you'll never go back to jpeg fine for your serious work. And the more image data you have to play with, the better your work will be. Using contrast is really important as well. And if you can use threaded filters, a circular polarizer works wonders for rendering beautiful contrast. If your camera can't use a threaded filter, there may be specialized accessories for your camera that you can use to achieve the same effects. Worse case, just get a square linear filter and hold it in front of your lens while you compose your shots, just know the orientation of the filter and you'll get the same effect as a threaded polarizer. Well, I hope this helps, and I hope a B&W pro answers your question as well, maybe we could both learn.

Peace

Answer 2

Since you have PhotoShop, there is no need to buy Lightroom, other than for its great workflow features and better slider interface. CS3 uses some of the same sliders.

If you are using CS2, then use a Channel Mixer adjustment layer.

1. Layer Menu -> New Adjustment Layer -> Channel Mixer...

2. Click Okay in new layer dialog. The Channel Mixer dialog will open.

3. Put a check in the Monochrome box at the bottom. The preview will turn B&W. The default of +100 Red works well.

4. Move the sliders around until the image looks like what you want. Usually with the total of all color sliders to = 100, but not required. Click okay.

Much better than desaturating.

Answer 3

I recently took a shot that I did and did a "save as" in microsoft picture editor to convert it to B&W. Pretty much the same as desaturating in P/S, but you could try it and see if the effect is any different. Then I upped the contrast from 50 to about 60. Some of the lighter areas had just begun to wash out. I compensated for that by lowering the brightness from 50 to about 40. The result was a much richer shot, but nothing washed out or weird looking.

Answer 4

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Answer 5

adjust the contrast levels to the maximum, then there will be no Grey. It looks sick! some stuff might be washed out so you will need to lower the brightness
heres an example:
go to www.freewebs.com/mrp3
The pic was made in paint.net which is free. If you want it, just Google it.

Answer 6

a lot of the time people usually don't change the contrast enough. so just keep increasing it until it's right. and if you also increase the brightness a bit then it will look a bit more natural.

Answer 7

its all about lighting, most black and white photos that are GORGEOUS are dark. try to focus on one thing with your camera, n have a background to it [for ex: if you focusing on a flower find something like a house or a tree for the bg] & use macro. black and white pictures usually have that too.
if you cant get the picture orginally dark get picasa ( u can google and dowload it ) and it darkens your pictures as well as crops, lightens, tints, etc.
hope i helped!

Answer 8

slr shooting in raw format makes alot of difference.