Only 11 more days of black and white…ouch! Yes, it really is getting that hard. We had a lovely sunset last night — for the first time in several days — the sun was peeking around the house across the street and the sky was a lovely blue with big fluffy white clouds and I desaturated it into a black and white. But I think the clouds came out pretty well!
The other day at Border’s I picked up a copy of Creative Black & White by Harold Davis and I’ve been using some of his techniques for maximizing tonal range in black and whites. My favorite so far is using Duotone color mode. Since I am self-taught and have never used Photoshop in a “print” setting, there are still lots of areas that I have never explored. Duotone, tritone and heck, even CMYK for that matter, are all new territory to me!
For today’s shot, I first used a black and white adjustment layer to desaturate it and then changed the color mode to grayscale. That gave me a degree of control over the color mix before Photoshop discarded the color data. Once it was a grayscale then I was able to select Duotone. The duotone menu lists several books of Pantone colors. I choose the metallic coated book which gives you incredible metallic colors that survive the conversion back to RGB without losing too much of their sparkle.
He also does some interesting things with LAB color before desaturating the image. I used that technique on the branches above but in my opinion it created a lot of noise in the shot and using Topaz Lab’s Denoise created a lot of halos around the branches…I’m not thrilled with that (not to mention that I accidentally uploaded a low-res version to flicker!). All in all, I think I learned a few useful tricks. What are your favorite ways of converting to black and white?
how interesting you are doing only black and white, I did it in November, it was touch going but so glad I did it as it really makes you see things differently. I love your shots here. Can you convert your camera to black and white before you take the pictures? that is what I did.
That’s where I got the idea from, Justine! : ) I had just started my 365 in
November and I didn’t want to do black and white when I had beautiful autumn
leaves to shoot all around me — so I waited until January when I knew it
would be cold and dreary. I can do the black and white in camera — to be
honest, I hadn’t even thought of doing it that way! I can see how that would
help you “see” what is going to be a more effective b & w while you’re still
shooting. Good idea.
Black and white is difficult to do well, I think, but you know, when you get it right, it is almost like no other. I have recently begun to play with black and white film, and although most has been frustration thus far, I’ve gotten a few that I have just loved!
I saw this basket on FLickr, and just fell in love with it!
lisa.
Thanks for this!
I will be following you and look forward to reading more! I’m so glad you linked up for the January 365 check-in so I could find you 😉
I’ve added your blog too! Like I said, Meagan does such a good job of
linking everyone together! Thanks to you for hosting the January check-in!!
: )