Digital-monochrome learning zone
You may have visited digital-monochrome to just browse the galleries or have an interest in this exciting area of photography. The Digital capture is one thing but producing outstanding monochrome images is not a matter of simply clicking the grey scale button, there's much more to it, but with practice and vision images that rival film prints can now be produced on your computer, this area is here to help you get started and keep mono alive in a colour world.
You can also visit and join my monochrome learning forum
The Digital-monochrome learning forum
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Video tutorials now available
Edit to Black and white with the PWF workflow
The PWF workflow video tutorial, full 88min audio, 9 chapters from Raw capture to final print output. In the tutorials you will be shown how to edit in Photoshop keeping within the Raw data to produce images that not only look great on screen but print superbly. By editing within the files boundaries no over editing is done so that every tone and fine detail is retained. The process is carried out in 4 stages, Blend from Raw, Image Balance, Image Optimization and printing. All edits using Photoshop tools only. There are tutorials that show the use of two superb optional plugins to further enhance detail and contrast and how to make Photoshop Actions for quicker workflow. The final tutorial shows how to proof and print your pictures. The original Raw file used in the tutorials is included on disc, plugins are not included. I am sure you will find these tutorials of great interest. Edit in a way that does justice to your cameras and lens by balancing and optimizing the files to bring out every fine detail, tone and contrast in a simple but artistic way.
Learn the art of Contrast Grading from colour to monochrome
Contrast Grading is based on wet darkroom techniques that have not changed over many years. The switch from chemical process to digital is a totally different way of working, but the principles still remain the same; camera exposure, paper exposure and paper grading are the key factors now as they were before. The skill is in visualizing where to add contrast and exposure in editing. Fortunately there are tools in the digital darkroom that can emulate the wet process. The videos on this disc will show you how to process a colour Raw file from capture to the finished monochrome image using only contrast and sharpening as the main tools. The process is easy to follow for beginners; advanced workers will find the workflow of interest. Easy to read text boxes as the video is running, 45mins, with the ability to pause the frames so text can be copied or studied in greater depth.
The CD which includes both copies of theimagingfactory Convert to B&W PRO Photoshop plugin and unlock codes for Microsoft windows and Apple Macintosh powerPC with Mac OS X , also the original Raw file used in the tutorials, represents one of the best value CD tutorials on the net as you are also receiving in the purchase price a Plugin that cost over £80 before it was discontinued last year. The plugin developer Oscar Rysdyk has given me permission to add my own plugins and codes to this disc Please be aware that the plugin DOES NOT, I repeat DOES NOT work on INTEL macs.
Go to this page to purchase
Video tutorials
--------------------------------------
Before framing your prints its always advisable to mat them first, the link below shows how and why.
Matting Explained
More information on editing and printing
The Digital-monochrome worker online magazine
--------------------------------------
All settings suggested in the following pages are approximate and I would suggest you use them as a starting point, do experiment until you are happy with the results that suit your style and taste.
"Its all about vision, use your camera to capture the light, think in grey tones, then when on your computer change from being a photographer and become an artist, try to envisage what your after, paint with your electronic brushes, add and take away, see the screen as canvas,"
Multi Raw plus Dodge and Burn techniques
Sky Editing plus Channel Mixer settings to imitate film response
To "See" in Black and White
Contrast increasing using USM and Contrast Masking
See the light, from colour to monochrome
Recommended Plug-ins
High Dynamic Range editing
About and why Black and white
Fox Talbot the Inventor
When Fox Talbot began experimenting in 1834 and using his Camera Obscura it forced him to use exposures of up to ten minutes to produce any kind of image, but of course he did not use film, it was paper coated with silver nitrate which had been previously soaked in a salt water solution and ended up making a layer of silver chloride. In September 1840, Talbot made a big breakthrough, by increasing the sensitivity of the paper 100 times he discovered that together with his negative-positive process of obtaining a print surely must justify him to be the inventor of photography as we know it today, and perhaps with the absence of colour technology the inventor of BW imagery.
It’s Popularity
Who would have thought from those days to now, where digital colour images are easy to produce without complex dark-room techniques that Black and White photography would still exist. Its popularity in my experience and through this website shows it is increasing rapidly after a slow demise previously.
Simplicity
To say why this is happening is without doubt its simplicity, "from shades of grey to rich blacks, texture and form with no colour to distract" making a good B&W image is not only very satisfying, but more a form of artistic impression by the author where style and visualization can be taken to extremes but still produce images that provoke delicate or graphic illustration of what was photographed at the time.
Why B&W
To ask why I prefer to shot in Black and White, my answer would always be that it "conveys a sense of drama and puts the photographers message across to screen or print that no other medium can achieve in the same way", from portraiture to dark menacing landscapes, one can stamp there authority and perception of what was in front of the lens in a way that would be unacceptable in colour, masters BW photographers of the past did just that and demand for there work is still strong today, a testimony to the art of B&W.
The Future
Who knows these days in technology what the future holds for B&W photography, for many years monochrome was for the masses and now to many second best to colour. B&W is an alternative form of art, not to compete with colour but another way to express ones desire to show images in a different way. In the end colour may hold the crown but for me and many other dedicated mono workers around the world monochrome is still the King and will stand the test of time for many years to come.
This is a quote from Ansel Adams
"I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practioner will again strive to comprehend and control them" (Ansel Adams, March 1981, "The Negative")
----------
Here's a few quotes from forum members when asked the question why do you shot monochrome
RAitch
I like B&W for the challenge. As you've said, you really have to have an eye for things that'll work well in B&W because you lack contrast with colour.
The B&W images I like produce more mood and contrast that a colour image would. When an image is done correctly in B&W, in my opinion, you couldn't produce the same thing using colour. B&W somehow portrays a more stripped down vision that makes the point very clear.
I don't feel that a colour image converted into B&W is all that great. When you can make a B&W image into something special, that's where it's at.
B&W has a unique 2-faced appearance. At first glance, it's very plain and non distractive. The more you study a B&W image, the more detail and information flows out of it. The lack of colour opens your mind to fill in the blanks. I truly think that every person sees something different in a B&W image and therefore more people can easily relate to them on a deeper level. I think it works as a great medium between artist and observer since there is a "grey" zone in between that is flexible.
A good B&W image is much harder to produce than a good colour image. If you can pull that off, you have some obvious talent.
Also, since there's usually less of a subject (you can't have a cluttered B&W image) that single subject tends to speak more... is more in focus and has more of a chance to speak it's mind and the artist's mind.
Plus, a nice B&W picture hanging in a black frame with white matting looks super-slick!! Although that's slowly becoming ubiquitous.
Steve Perks
Martin...I'm struggling to add to what Raitch has already said as we obviously think along the same lines.
I sometimes look at b&w shots and full colour shots as cars.
Take a souped up old banger with spoilers and go fast stripes...colour always impresses, but what is left when you take it all away?
Without colour, the image has to stand on it's own 2 feet in terms of composition, lighting, tones, texture and dynamics.
Take away the colour 'wow' factor and a lot of (my) images just don't hack it.
That does not mean I am anti-colour, I think colour is beautiful and I would rather lose my hearing than my sight.
I am trying to convey a different message when working in black and white.
If I could narrow that message down, I would be looking at simplicity and lighting to lead the eye to the main subject
Simon King
I know exactly what you mean!
I used to only EVER shoot in colour ( 20+ yrs ago) but LOVED B+W but had never attempted to emulate any of the great B+W photographers because colour was where I personally was at with my shooting.
Then after looking a lot at B+W I suddenly noticed that I really didn't notice the shadows in my colour shots, not like I didn't see them at all but I didn't consciously use them as part of the composition. This made me realise that there must be a lot of room for improvement in my colour composition, and that was the reason I started shooting B+W. It was purely an exercise in teaching myself to notice shadows in my colour shot
Then slowly I started to see in B+W as well as colour and took some half decent B+W shots. Now I do find I can visualise in B+W as well, but it just isn't as natural to me as colour. However I also did a lot of experimental stuff in B+W and was flattered to see some of the professional B+W shooters I knew back then use my ideas in a couple of their shoots. Old hat stuff now but unusual then
The incredible thing with Digital capture at the quality that is available now is that you don't have to commit before the shot to whether it's to be B+W or not. So this has opened up another new aspect of photography, a shot that can at the drop of a hat (i.e. with minimum processing effort) be be proofed as a B+W as easily as a colour shot.
Colour is a language on it's own, you could theoretically produce pics that were virtually formless and texture less in colour and still have an interesting pic.
We all have an emotional response to colour, whether we like it or not, so we will always have an emotional response to a greater or lesser degree to any colour pic (don't believe me? Look at the Luscher colour test. This is a test where Dr Max Luscher demonstrated that the order of preference that you choose given colours in categorically illustrates your current emotional and psychological profile)
This isn't to say that we don't have an emotional response to B+W but that the colour in a pic can be emotionally distracting from the composing or appreciation of the pic. Of course colour can be used deliberately that way and some of the greatest colour shooters do that either intentionally or intuitively.
However when you see (intend) in B+W you are less concerned with the weighting of the colour and more with the balance of the whole pic therefore automatically you are concentrating more on composition.
The easiest way to illustrate this is to compose a pic first then, choose a small aperture e.g. f11,16 or 22 and stop down. NOW look at your composition - you will usually want to reframe, why? Because the colour is mostly stripped from the scene and you are unencumbered with an excess of information, the meaning, the intellectual content removed, and can see through to what is behind the composition, now more aware of the shadows and highlights, the tonal weighting of the scene as a whole, the basic building blocks of the shot.
The analogy that springs to mind is the Tarot cards.( basic medieval version) They all have colour and are imbued with meaning. Yet if you strip them down to their individual geometry ,so they are purely a square below a triangle, or a sphere above a square etc the shapes alone contains significance and influence, they become more interesting for what is behind the design, not less interesting. How often do we appreciate this with colour pics ( beyond the rule of thirds) yet it is fundamental to B+W composition.
I think the psychological counterpart of this is that we, as human beings, have the potential to appreciate our world with a wide range of senses, yet much of the time we are caught up in the process of intellectual meaning. B+W invites us to become less civilised, more intuitive, to respond with our gut, to chew on tone and texture, light and shadow; the basic echoes of our psyche. This is why we feel an automatic affiliation with B+W, it speaks to us on a more primitive level and therefore a more common language.
Even though B+W shots may contain meaning in the context of society ,culture or emotion, they in addition are more likely to have a depth that captures us in fascination, that resonates at a level we may not at first consciously understand because of it's subconscious symbolism. This medium encourages us to communicate FROM that deeper primitive part of us because we intuitively feel it talks TO us in that language.
For this reason is tends to be more satisfying than colour, it reaches into us at the level where satisfaction is very fundamental and essential to us, so our motive behind taking B+W is not always conscious, but it explains the uncanny lure it holds over us, both to take and to enjoy B+W
jfrancho
In some cases, colour obscures some aspects of the picture - especially texture. Colour adds a lot of information to a picture that our brain has to process before we can form an opinion. In contrast, a bnw offers a less is more opportunity. It allows us to link various shapes and object in the picture to a particular theme. The image not only has to stand on it's own two feet, but it seems that it must also possess a special extra quality that can't always be quantified. It blows my mind when colour pictures that are seemingly mundane, mediocre even really come to life when converted to bnw. There are some spectacular examples of that in this thread and on Martin's site.
Gordon Hodgkinson
My first thought is "I love aspects of photography that make me see the world differently. There are some techniques that you can catch with a camera that you can't see with the eye - like star trails, milky effects of flowing water, lights trails and to me shots like that are fun and exciting. Black & White shots make me linger longer over an image, studying the form and texture
compared to the same shot in colour. And for me creating a digital black and white image feels like crafting a work of art - where I spend time with each area of the shot thinking about what it takes to bring out the intended effect."
You can also visit and join my monochrome learning forum
The Digital-monochrome learning forum
----------------------------------------
Video tutorials now available
Edit to Black and white with the PWF workflow
The PWF workflow video tutorial, full 88min audio, 9 chapters from Raw capture to final print output. In the tutorials you will be shown how to edit in Photoshop keeping within the Raw data to produce images that not only look great on screen but print superbly. By editing within the files boundaries no over editing is done so that every tone and fine detail is retained. The process is carried out in 4 stages, Blend from Raw, Image Balance, Image Optimization and printing. All edits using Photoshop tools only. There are tutorials that show the use of two superb optional plugins to further enhance detail and contrast and how to make Photoshop Actions for quicker workflow. The final tutorial shows how to proof and print your pictures. The original Raw file used in the tutorials is included on disc, plugins are not included. I am sure you will find these tutorials of great interest. Edit in a way that does justice to your cameras and lens by balancing and optimizing the files to bring out every fine detail, tone and contrast in a simple but artistic way.
Learn the art of Contrast Grading from colour to monochrome
Contrast Grading is based on wet darkroom techniques that have not changed over many years. The switch from chemical process to digital is a totally different way of working, but the principles still remain the same; camera exposure, paper exposure and paper grading are the key factors now as they were before. The skill is in visualizing where to add contrast and exposure in editing. Fortunately there are tools in the digital darkroom that can emulate the wet process. The videos on this disc will show you how to process a colour Raw file from capture to the finished monochrome image using only contrast and sharpening as the main tools. The process is easy to follow for beginners; advanced workers will find the workflow of interest. Easy to read text boxes as the video is running, 45mins, with the ability to pause the frames so text can be copied or studied in greater depth.
The CD which includes both copies of theimagingfactory Convert to B&W PRO Photoshop plugin and unlock codes for Microsoft windows and Apple Macintosh powerPC with Mac OS X , also the original Raw file used in the tutorials, represents one of the best value CD tutorials on the net as you are also receiving in the purchase price a Plugin that cost over £80 before it was discontinued last year. The plugin developer Oscar Rysdyk has given me permission to add my own plugins and codes to this disc Please be aware that the plugin DOES NOT, I repeat DOES NOT work on INTEL macs.
Go to this page to purchase
Video tutorials
--------------------------------------
Before framing your prints its always advisable to mat them first, the link below shows how and why.
Matting Explained
More information on editing and printing
The Digital-monochrome worker online magazine
--------------------------------------
All settings suggested in the following pages are approximate and I would suggest you use them as a starting point, do experiment until you are happy with the results that suit your style and taste.
"Its all about vision, use your camera to capture the light, think in grey tones, then when on your computer change from being a photographer and become an artist, try to envisage what your after, paint with your electronic brushes, add and take away, see the screen as canvas,"
Multi Raw plus Dodge and Burn techniques
Sky Editing plus Channel Mixer settings to imitate film response
To "See" in Black and White
Contrast increasing using USM and Contrast Masking
See the light, from colour to monochrome
Recommended Plug-ins
High Dynamic Range editing
About and why Black and white
Fox Talbot the Inventor
When Fox Talbot began experimenting in 1834 and using his Camera Obscura it forced him to use exposures of up to ten minutes to produce any kind of image, but of course he did not use film, it was paper coated with silver nitrate which had been previously soaked in a salt water solution and ended up making a layer of silver chloride. In September 1840, Talbot made a big breakthrough, by increasing the sensitivity of the paper 100 times he discovered that together with his negative-positive process of obtaining a print surely must justify him to be the inventor of photography as we know it today, and perhaps with the absence of colour technology the inventor of BW imagery.
It’s Popularity
Who would have thought from those days to now, where digital colour images are easy to produce without complex dark-room techniques that Black and White photography would still exist. Its popularity in my experience and through this website shows it is increasing rapidly after a slow demise previously.
Simplicity
To say why this is happening is without doubt its simplicity, "from shades of grey to rich blacks, texture and form with no colour to distract" making a good B&W image is not only very satisfying, but more a form of artistic impression by the author where style and visualization can be taken to extremes but still produce images that provoke delicate or graphic illustration of what was photographed at the time.
Why B&W
To ask why I prefer to shot in Black and White, my answer would always be that it "conveys a sense of drama and puts the photographers message across to screen or print that no other medium can achieve in the same way", from portraiture to dark menacing landscapes, one can stamp there authority and perception of what was in front of the lens in a way that would be unacceptable in colour, masters BW photographers of the past did just that and demand for there work is still strong today, a testimony to the art of B&W.
The Future
Who knows these days in technology what the future holds for B&W photography, for many years monochrome was for the masses and now to many second best to colour. B&W is an alternative form of art, not to compete with colour but another way to express ones desire to show images in a different way. In the end colour may hold the crown but for me and many other dedicated mono workers around the world monochrome is still the King and will stand the test of time for many years to come.
This is a quote from Ansel Adams
"I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practioner will again strive to comprehend and control them" (Ansel Adams, March 1981, "The Negative")
----------
Here's a few quotes from forum members when asked the question why do you shot monochrome
RAitch
I like B&W for the challenge. As you've said, you really have to have an eye for things that'll work well in B&W because you lack contrast with colour.
The B&W images I like produce more mood and contrast that a colour image would. When an image is done correctly in B&W, in my opinion, you couldn't produce the same thing using colour. B&W somehow portrays a more stripped down vision that makes the point very clear.
I don't feel that a colour image converted into B&W is all that great. When you can make a B&W image into something special, that's where it's at.
B&W has a unique 2-faced appearance. At first glance, it's very plain and non distractive. The more you study a B&W image, the more detail and information flows out of it. The lack of colour opens your mind to fill in the blanks. I truly think that every person sees something different in a B&W image and therefore more people can easily relate to them on a deeper level. I think it works as a great medium between artist and observer since there is a "grey" zone in between that is flexible.
A good B&W image is much harder to produce than a good colour image. If you can pull that off, you have some obvious talent.
Also, since there's usually less of a subject (you can't have a cluttered B&W image) that single subject tends to speak more... is more in focus and has more of a chance to speak it's mind and the artist's mind.
Plus, a nice B&W picture hanging in a black frame with white matting looks super-slick!! Although that's slowly becoming ubiquitous.
Steve Perks
Martin...I'm struggling to add to what Raitch has already said as we obviously think along the same lines.
I sometimes look at b&w shots and full colour shots as cars.
Take a souped up old banger with spoilers and go fast stripes...colour always impresses, but what is left when you take it all away?
Without colour, the image has to stand on it's own 2 feet in terms of composition, lighting, tones, texture and dynamics.
Take away the colour 'wow' factor and a lot of (my) images just don't hack it.
That does not mean I am anti-colour, I think colour is beautiful and I would rather lose my hearing than my sight.
I am trying to convey a different message when working in black and white.
If I could narrow that message down, I would be looking at simplicity and lighting to lead the eye to the main subject
Simon King
I know exactly what you mean!
I used to only EVER shoot in colour ( 20+ yrs ago) but LOVED B+W but had never attempted to emulate any of the great B+W photographers because colour was where I personally was at with my shooting.
Then after looking a lot at B+W I suddenly noticed that I really didn't notice the shadows in my colour shots, not like I didn't see them at all but I didn't consciously use them as part of the composition. This made me realise that there must be a lot of room for improvement in my colour composition, and that was the reason I started shooting B+W. It was purely an exercise in teaching myself to notice shadows in my colour shot
Then slowly I started to see in B+W as well as colour and took some half decent B+W shots. Now I do find I can visualise in B+W as well, but it just isn't as natural to me as colour. However I also did a lot of experimental stuff in B+W and was flattered to see some of the professional B+W shooters I knew back then use my ideas in a couple of their shoots. Old hat stuff now but unusual then
The incredible thing with Digital capture at the quality that is available now is that you don't have to commit before the shot to whether it's to be B+W or not. So this has opened up another new aspect of photography, a shot that can at the drop of a hat (i.e. with minimum processing effort) be be proofed as a B+W as easily as a colour shot.
Colour is a language on it's own, you could theoretically produce pics that were virtually formless and texture less in colour and still have an interesting pic.
We all have an emotional response to colour, whether we like it or not, so we will always have an emotional response to a greater or lesser degree to any colour pic (don't believe me? Look at the Luscher colour test. This is a test where Dr Max Luscher demonstrated that the order of preference that you choose given colours in categorically illustrates your current emotional and psychological profile)
This isn't to say that we don't have an emotional response to B+W but that the colour in a pic can be emotionally distracting from the composing or appreciation of the pic. Of course colour can be used deliberately that way and some of the greatest colour shooters do that either intentionally or intuitively.
However when you see (intend) in B+W you are less concerned with the weighting of the colour and more with the balance of the whole pic therefore automatically you are concentrating more on composition.
The easiest way to illustrate this is to compose a pic first then, choose a small aperture e.g. f11,16 or 22 and stop down. NOW look at your composition - you will usually want to reframe, why? Because the colour is mostly stripped from the scene and you are unencumbered with an excess of information, the meaning, the intellectual content removed, and can see through to what is behind the composition, now more aware of the shadows and highlights, the tonal weighting of the scene as a whole, the basic building blocks of the shot.
The analogy that springs to mind is the Tarot cards.( basic medieval version) They all have colour and are imbued with meaning. Yet if you strip them down to their individual geometry ,so they are purely a square below a triangle, or a sphere above a square etc the shapes alone contains significance and influence, they become more interesting for what is behind the design, not less interesting. How often do we appreciate this with colour pics ( beyond the rule of thirds) yet it is fundamental to B+W composition.
I think the psychological counterpart of this is that we, as human beings, have the potential to appreciate our world with a wide range of senses, yet much of the time we are caught up in the process of intellectual meaning. B+W invites us to become less civilised, more intuitive, to respond with our gut, to chew on tone and texture, light and shadow; the basic echoes of our psyche. This is why we feel an automatic affiliation with B+W, it speaks to us on a more primitive level and therefore a more common language.
Even though B+W shots may contain meaning in the context of society ,culture or emotion, they in addition are more likely to have a depth that captures us in fascination, that resonates at a level we may not at first consciously understand because of it's subconscious symbolism. This medium encourages us to communicate FROM that deeper primitive part of us because we intuitively feel it talks TO us in that language.
For this reason is tends to be more satisfying than colour, it reaches into us at the level where satisfaction is very fundamental and essential to us, so our motive behind taking B+W is not always conscious, but it explains the uncanny lure it holds over us, both to take and to enjoy B+W
jfrancho
In some cases, colour obscures some aspects of the picture - especially texture. Colour adds a lot of information to a picture that our brain has to process before we can form an opinion. In contrast, a bnw offers a less is more opportunity. It allows us to link various shapes and object in the picture to a particular theme. The image not only has to stand on it's own two feet, but it seems that it must also possess a special extra quality that can't always be quantified. It blows my mind when colour pictures that are seemingly mundane, mediocre even really come to life when converted to bnw. There are some spectacular examples of that in this thread and on Martin's site.
Gordon Hodgkinson
My first thought is "I love aspects of photography that make me see the world differently. There are some techniques that you can catch with a camera that you can't see with the eye - like star trails, milky effects of flowing water, lights trails and to me shots like that are fun and exciting. Black & White shots make me linger longer over an image, studying the form and texture
compared to the same shot in colour. And for me creating a digital black and white image feels like crafting a work of art - where I spend time with each area of the shot thinking about what it takes to bring out the intended effect."
