B&W Photos

[Cactussed]

Guys

Have a Canon 400D. Which I haven't used for ages I might add, but have just gotten round to buying a 50mm 1.8 prime lens. Cheap as chips and everyone raves about them so I thought I'd buy one and get inspired again....

Anyway, when shooting B&W, do you shoot in full colour and then adjust in photoshop accordingly, or do you use the B&W mode in the camera?

I suspect the latter but thought I'd ask.

[nick_bbb]

I would always shoot colour so you have the colour shot if you want/need it.

[MartinP]

If you let the camera shoot in colour then you can decide how to map the conversion in post processing. Let the camera do the conversion and you lose all that control as the colour information isn't available to you.

[Cactussed]

OK, cool.
What method do you use to convert then?

[Steve Evil]

I shoot in RAW + JPEG on my 350, then set it to B+W so the image that comes up on the LCD will be in B+W and give you a good indication of what the image will look like, then you also have the RAW file that will be in colour if you want to fall back on that.

[MartinP]

If converting a large number of images I use Lightroom, or for a single image conversion I'd usually use Photoshop.

[AlfaFoxtrot]

Some people spend a lot of time converting things to B+W (extensive guides around on the internet) but for me the "B+W High Contrast" option in Lightroom works fine...

[nick_bbb]

There are lots of good actions for photoshop for B&W conversions too. I've been using one of the free samples from here...

http://www.gettotallyrad.com/

[VxDuncan]

Personally I shoot colour, then convert using Photoshops Colour mixer (image->adjustments I think). Tick the monochrome option, then adjust the sliders to taste. Basically you have a choice which colour channels you want to make the image up of and want to aim to keep the three percentages totaling 100%. I like this approach as it gives you total control. It's the digital equivilent of the red, green and blue filters you would you for black and white film photography in the old days.

The B&W shots here where done using the channel mixer:
http://www.pbase.com/duncan_c/papuafavs

[Dai Capp]

I shoot in colour then convert...

I've been getting some nice results recently using a Elements standard conversion, manually upping the contrast and then creating a solid colour layer in either black or white to intensify...

White layer



Black layer



All the best

DC

[davidd]

There was a good article in one of the mags a few months ago on the different ways of doing this using photoshop. I have usually used the saturation sliders in the past but the article talked about using the labs feature. I'll see if I can find it online.


Ah, download this (not the same article but has some other good stuff in it).

http://www.photoanswers.co.uk/upload/3306/attachme...

D

Edited by davidd on Wednesday 21st January 12:45

[Cactussed]

Brilliant!
Thanks for that, very useful article for a numpty like me!