Pixiq

There are some big advantages to shooting color when taking images into a computer. The color allows you to make B/W contrast adjustments for each channel of red, green and blue along with their compliments cyan, magenta and yellow. This option will allow you to produce separations between colored objects in your subject that would not be possible with a grayscale (B/W) image. a grayscale image is one where the color data has been eliminated.

I shoot in color so that I can control the outcome of my B/W images both in terms of contrast and as a means of creating a convincing B/W rendition of colors. For example: In a photo of an apple tree, should the red apples appear darker or lighter than the leaves? In this case adjusting the red channel will allow the tones of the apple to separate lighter or darker. In my mind, I sense that the best rendition would be one in which the apples should appear darker than the leaves.

In order to alter tonalities, you must have the image color data. Color is the key to producing contrast separation in black and white photography.

The following HDR image is a base image for creating a dramatic effect in black and white.

© JOHN NEEL

Note -  This can be accomplished with any color RGB image including HDR. I shoot mostly HDR these days.

The following shows the result of using the Black and White Adjustment layer in Photoshop without any corrections. The objects in the scene a yellow sign, a red brick wall and a blue sky are all rendered too close in terms of object separation. This is because all of the named tones have a similar color value. When translated to B/W, they are transformed to a gray tone equal to the color value. This causes the tones to have very little if any separation. It also makes the image look flat (without contrast). This is especially true with pure colors like pure red or blue. What many photographers do not realize is that most colors in th ereal world are actually a mixture of colors. The sky we call blue sky is mostly blue, part green and part red.

The sliders above, can be used to create separations between colors. Moving the red slider to the left will make the reds darker. Moving it to the right will make the reds lighter in tone. This will happen with all of the other colors when using the appropriate sliders. It is one way to increase or decrease the apparent contrast between subjects.

I have discovered that you can alter the colors in the photograph for the purpose of creating even more dramatic results. For instance - turning a red object into a different color might make it much easier to separate adjacent tones. Adding a similar or the same color to other elements will allow the objects to end up as similar tonalities of gray. 

In the next example, I altered the yellow sign to a cyan/green color using the sliders and the adjustment hand in the Hue Saturation Dialogue box. Clicking on this tool will allow you to go to a particular color in the image and alter it to another color or saturation. To change the color to something else, click on the hand and then within the image, on the color you wish to alter. Once selected, drag the top color slider back and forth until you reach the color you want to use. In the following example, I wanted to have a slightly different result for the sign than for the sky. The objects have been adjusted to the colors shown and indicated in all of the examples.

As shown in the following image, this results in a greater tonal separation between the yellow sign object and the red wall. By adjusting the sliders for each color you can make the colors either darker or lighter than the adjoining colored objects. Here, all of the the sliders have been used to optimize the results.

As a result of our efforts, the image above has a better separation in the important areas of the scene indicated at the bottom of the image for sign, wall and sky.

The next image, shows that the sign is kept as yellow, the wall is moved to magenta and the sky has been made green/cyan. The gray area shows one rendition asa result of the sliders.

The following shows a variation moving the sliders to a different configuration.

In the following, due to the sign being change from yellow to red, the yellow in the brick color has also been made more reddish and saturated . The sky was changed to a cyan color. In my example, I applied the changes to the whole image. Normally, I would mask off the object so that the effect would only happen to the object and not the overall scene.                 

Below is the resulting image once the Black and White Adjustment Layer is added. Again, the sliders have been tweaked to optimize the resuts.

© JOHN NEEL

 As you might notice, the results can be either very dramatic or quite subtle.

Now that we have come this far, I must admit that for the most part, altering colors is not normally necessary when uisng the color adjustments in the Black and White Adjustment layer. we can creat very nice results with that tool alone. Lightroom has a similar tool.

So why go through all this trouble?

Because we are not finished. We have a bit more to talk about.

In much of my work, there are very good reasons to perform these kinds of operations. The adjustment of specific colors makes a huge difference to the final outcome of B/W. This happens to be the first step in my process for creating more dramatic Black and White results.

I will discuss the next step in the following post.

"The beauty of photography is that we can connect in the beauty of light!" – JN

Read more of my posts for articles about digital and analog imaging.

THIS POSTING AS WELL AS ALL PHOTOGRAPHS AND GALLERY IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHT - © JOHN NEEL AND ARE NOT TO BE USED FOR ANY PURPOSE WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT FROM THE WRITER, THE PHOTOGRAPHER AND/OR PIXIQ.