The World In Black & White

I love the look and "feel" of black and white photography. That's not to say I don't care for color...in fact much of my color processing involves pushing the colors way beyond what they actually were. I really like seeing that pop of brightness that practically makes your eyes water, and yet black and white is still my favorite form of the art of photography. The drama and mystery that is contained in a well done b/w conversion simply outdoes anything you could come up with in a color version. Still, not everything I shot is converted to black and white. That's a creative and artistic decision made somewhere during initial processing, but there are shots that I know as soon as I put my eye to the viewfinder that I want to see in black and white.



The actual conversion to b/w is a whole world unto itself, with an enormous amount of methods available both in Photoshop and other image editors, and third party plug-ins and stand alones. To begin, I'm a firm believer in taking all your shots in color, even though many digital cameras today have settings that allow taking it in b/w or a sepia tone. You're just limiting your creative possibilities by doing that. Shoot color, convert to black and white, and you still have the option to go back to color if the conversion isn't floating your boat. I've experimented with a lot of different conversion methods, read a million tutorials, played with numerous actions developed for Photoshop b/w conversions, and still don't stick to strictly one. One that I do use a lot though, is a freebie from Photo-Plugins. It has a easy interface, a lot of tweakability, and it's free...check it out.



Another site that also offers free downloads and a great assortment of b/w conversion tools is The Light's Right Studio. Their b/w and toning actions and presets are some of the best I've seen...well worth a look. As long as we're talking about freebies...another plugin that offers a lot of great looks is one that has been around for a while, but still has a lot going for it. It's Virtual Photographer from OpticVerve Labs. Color presets, b/w presets, toning presets and more. Again, a product with massive amounts of tweakability, cool looks, and best of all...free.



There's a lot to be said for the newest edition of Photoshop (CS3) and it's b/w converter. It's intuitive, and I like the ability to simply put your cursor on a portion of the photo you want to tweak and simply move it left or right to lighten or darken. (There's bit more than that to doing a proper conversion, but it's a cool feature!)




And don't forget the built-in Adobe Raw Converter packaged with Photoshop CS3. It has a pretty good set of b/w conversion tools and since it's a Raw conversion, it's non-destructive. (You are shooting RAW...right?)