Remember the Black and White

Color is swell. I'm a big fan of color. We see in color, everyday. Which is one of the primary reasons that black and white photographs often pack so much visual and emotional punch. It's different and it reduces your subject matter to its essence. Just shapes and tones without the sometimes distracting elements of color.

But black and white is not simply the removal of color. Black and white isn't even completely accurate in most applications. Photoshop would call it grayscale. Black and white and every shade of gray in between.


For maximum versatility, most digital photographers shoot in color. We know we can convert to b/w later. But there are so many different ways. Of course, there is desaturate. But keep in mind some other techniques such as channel mixer, CS3's Black and white tool, the similar function in Camera Raw, or third party favorites like nik's Color Efex. Many of these tools allow great leeway in the tonal quality and range as well as important contrast issues.


And to round things out, I'll mention one of my favorite techniques, using an infrared filter. In this example shot, the image was cropped, filtered with nik Color Efex 2's infrared black and white, and filtered again with Photoshop's diffuse glow.


Not every image is well-suited to a b/w treatment. But you may be pleasantly surprised by which ones are. Experiment. Play. Black and white is old-school, but getting it right is both a challenge and a joy.