Colour verses Black and White.

Black and White v Colour.

I like both monochrome and full colour photography. When I see my images on the computer monitor I nearly always apply tweaks using Photoshop from the original RAW files. Some pictures really do lend themselves to a black and white conversion, whilst many do not in my opinion.

Any thoughts? Is Black and White still valid?

James,

The picture of the old lady and her bike in Chester (Image ID: 1079925) was converted to black & white to add a slightly vintage look and then I thought I’d try using a sepia tint to add to the effect. The Black & White adjustment layer in Photoshop has a colour filter and after playing around with the tint and saturation, I settled on the slightly cool sepia tone. To finish it off I decided to go for a vignette. A dark vignette was not going to work as well as one fading away to white and that is what I chose. The original colour version was okay but the sepia one has a stronger look.

The man in the Huddersfield pub (Image ID: 1186985) quietly doing his crossword, enjoying his second pint, just attracted my attention. There was a strong winter light coming from the window that backlit the beer and my eye homed in on that as I shot off a quick shot, taking a chance at 1/13^th second, holding my breath supporting the Nikon with my elbows on the table. When I opened up the RAW file, I knew almost immediately that the colour of the bitter was the focal point and needed to be made even more eye catching. In Photoshop, after the usual tweaks in the converter I got the image tidied up, getting rid of a lot of ugly pipes viewed through the window and then applied the black and white filter to the image. The beer just cried out to left amber, so I applied a brush to the B&W mask, painting out that part of the layer revealing the true amber colour of the beer on the layer underneath.  

Both of these shots are favourites of mine, and for me prove that post production editing can really make a difference. The ends do justify the means sometimes.  

John,

Thank you for your kind words. A few of my monochrome images have been submitted recently, but they do represent a minority of my photographic work. Horses for courses!  

In the days of film, if you needed to shoot sports action or in low light, there was little option but to use B&W, since any colour film faster than about 100 ASA was too grainy. Hence street photographers and war photographers were more-or-less obliged to use uprated HP5 or Tri X , producing those sharp gritty B&W images.

Nowadays,  with the high ISO capabilites of the digital colour sensor, there are no such limitations, and the choice of B&W or colour is not dictated by technology. Undoubtedly some shots look better in B&W, but now the choice can be made after taking the shot. My personal preference is to keep post camera tweaking to a minimum, but that is my own way of working and is not intended as criticism of those who make more use of Photoshop etc. Furthermore,  I do not have the software or the skill to produce some of the effects Rod has so creatively produced.

What I sometimes do is convert an image to B&W to give an 'old world' look.  This can be very interesting if I happen to have a genuine old photograph of the same location to compare it with.

It has to be colour for me all the time ... B/W do have their place of course, but you can't beat a beautiful colour image to enlighten the senses for me. I noticed there are a lot of B/W images uploaded today far too many really & after the first couple they all seem to look the same? Quality rather than quantity & maybe then they would stand out more ? 

John, I've just commented on your picture, I think it is a wonderful example of how good a B&W picture can look. Some images work, some don't, this one does. 

Very kind of Dave as ever too  

During the last year or so John has shown an interest in processing programmes and shooting in RAW and has asked questions and I've tried to help where I can. After all that is partly what the site is about is it not?

Just last week I gave him a link to a free programme on offer through DIGITAL CAMERA magazine.If anyone wants a copy send me a pm and I'll copy you the download info. 

He sent me a couple of examples of the previously mentioned woodland  scene. One was his original and the other an edited version where he had made considerable improvement to colour and contrast, maybe you should put the edited version up for comparison John.... With the sudden interest in B&W I knew this would be suited to the process so simply did a very quick B&W conversion, a bit of dodging and burning and a slight curves adjustment, took less than 2 minutes John liked it and is now coming round to being a B&W fan. If you do try B&W conversion don't be afraid to go for strong punchy images unlike some of the fairly flat ones that appeared a few days ago. Successful B&W generally relies on a full range of tones from Black to White with good strong contrast. This particularly applies to landscapes whereas Portraits can live with a predominance of darker tones, known as LOW KEY, or where the predominance is towards the lighter tones, HIGH KEY.