Australian Photography – September 2019

A SIMPLE BLACK AND WHITE WORKFLOW

B+W images can be created on at least three different levels.

PHOTO TIPS: BLACK AND WHITE CONVERSIONS

STARTING IMAGE

The image as shot in raw. This was taken at the Nevis Valley

near Queenstown, NZ, and whilst the sky is reasonably

1 dramatic, the hut and surrounding grass are flat and a bit ‘meh’.

STEP

3

STEP

FINAL TOUCHES

The final touches are done back

in the Basic Pane where I have

boosted the Highlights to add

contrast to the sky, darkened the

Shadows (the grass in this case)

to make the hut stand out more,

then added some overall Contrast

and Clarity for the same reason.

There is a graduated filter over the

sky adding some Clarity to make

the sky textures more obvious,

and I might add a subtle Post-crop

Vignette to complete the job. ❂

NEXT LEVEL CONVERSION

Changing to the B&W Pane in Lightroom allows me to darken

the Oranges and Yellows (the grass) without changing the

lightness of the hut or the sky. The hut now stands out much

better and it’s interesting to note that the curtains also darken

slightly because they are cream coloured in the original.

BASIC CONVERSION
Clicking on the Black & White option in the Basic Pane of the Develop Module
yields this vanilla conversion which is deadly dull and shows just how similar
in tone the grey of the hut is compared to the orangey/brown grass.

1. There’s the built in B+W mode
   in your camera which can be
   quite effective if your camera
   has a high contrast B+W mode
   or a B+W with red filter setting.
   Shooting “raw + jpeg” can give
   you a bet both ways!


2. Then there is the option to work
   with raw files in Lightroom or
   Capture One Pro (or other raw
   processors) to make a Colour to
   B+W conversion. How this works
   depends on the software but I use
   Lightroom for 99% of my B+W
   work as it is plenty good enough
   for the vast majority of my needs.
   3. Photoshop offers some more
   advanced B+W conversions which
   are a bit too complex to go into
   here and are only needed when
   you need the utmost in control
   using layers and masks.

My normal workflow is as

follows, using an image from NZ

which has some good potential

but is too flat and suffers from the

uninteresting brown grass being a

very similar tone to the hut. What

I want is for the hut to stand out

much more and for the sky to

retain the drama of the original

wild and windy scene.

2

STEP

4

STEP