Today we're talking about
black-and-white photographs...
why would you do it, and how do you
make your pictures sing..
Hey everybody welcome back to
ask David Bergman...
I'm David Bergman answering your
photography questions.
Listen don't forget to go to
askDavidBergman.com to
ask your own photo questions,
I'll pick the best ones and answer them
right here on a future show, but for
today I've got one from Tyler K. and he
asked, what steps do you take when you
convert an image to black and white, do
you just click the black and white
button in your photo editor, or is the
process more involved and nuanced?
Black and white photography...
whoo I love making pictures black and
white... now how would
you do it?
Well first of all... is it better
to shoot in black and white right in the
camera?
I say no, I think it's better to just
capture everything in color, and then you
have the option afterward in the
computer to post-process however you want.
It gives you a lot more flexibility,
and a lot more options.
Now why would you shoot black and white?
Well me personally?
I've been on the road all year with Luke Combs
on tour, and I often make my
pictures black and white, and there's
really two main reasons why I do it.
The first one is... when the color doesn't
really add anything to the image, there
may be color there, but it really doesn't
help in any way.
So for example this picture of our multi-
instrumentalist...
Kurt, he's playing the banjo, and it's
there's really, not a whole lot of color
in the image, it's kind of not very
saturated, there's a little bit of blue
in the background, but it doesn't really
add anything.
So if you go ahead and
convert this to black and white,
it really makes it pop off the screen a lot
more, it gets more contrasty, the
highlights look great, the lights really
flare out, and what it does is, you're not
distracted by any other color that's in
the image, you're really just seeing the
true frame, and what's happening
in the image, without being distracted by
any of those other colors.
So that's one reason why I might go black
and white.
The other reason really is, when the
light that's there is actually kind of
bad, right?
So for example... at a lot of
concerts they use these LED lights that
are magenta or weird blue color, and
sometimes they don't really reproduce
well in pictures, and in this case we
have this picture where there's this..
those magenta lights, that are hitting
Luke's skin, and his hat, and his arm, and
it really doesn't help the image...
it actually kind of makes it
a little bit nasty right?
So I really don't want that
color now, instead of I could go in there
and selectively pick that color out, and
try to desaturate it, but the other thing
I can do is, just make the image black
and white.
A lot of times if you're shooting,
let's say a concert in a club,
there might be one red spotlight on the
subject, and it's just that's the only
color you're seeing... is that red color,
and it's really pretty nasty, so you can
make that black and white in this case.
if I just switch that picture over to
black and white, it really pops off the
screen like I said.
You can see the spotlight popping out
and you can concentrate on Luke's facial
expression, and just the action that's
going on, without being thrown off by any
weird colors.
So how do you make a picture of
black and white?
Well there really are a
lot of different ways to do it.
I'm going to show you three methods
that can be used.
The first one... let's take this
picture of Luke popping his head out of
the tour bus, now this picture, I probably
wouldn't make him black and white
obviously, because of the color, it is so
dynamic, but there was this crazy sunset
happening, and I popped a little flash in
on Luke, and I under exposed the sky and
it made it look really really cool, which
it was to the naked eye as well, I was
just to reproduce it, that's how I would
do it, so what Tyler asked in the in
the question was about just clicking the
black and white button, well in most
cases what that means is coming in and
this is in Photoshop, there's similar
controls in Lightroom, but just going to
the mode switch and instead of RGB color,
switching over to grayscale, and by doing
that it just basically gets rid of all
the color, and it's kind of like gray
right... it's really flat, not very contrasty.
That sky is just kind of boring, you
could still see a little bit of what's
happening there, but it just doesn't have
much pop to it, so that's the default way
that people sort of first start to use,
but there is a better way.
Well if you come under here,
under image and you go
to adjustments and black and white,
now this black and white adjustment you can
see what it does...
it brings up a dialog box that gives you a
whole bunch of different colors.
Now why are there colors there,
what this does is - you can
selectively pick the colors that are
originally in the image,
and then make those lighter and darker,
so remember we had all those reds and
oranges in the sky by taking this red slider,
and making it darker.
I'm actually darkening only
the reds in the picture.
Conversely go the other way,
and make those reds white.
So obviously by going through the
different colors, and making adjustments
however I want, I can selectively change
the color.
This is just not a very... I'm
doing, not doing, a very good job here, but
that just gives you an idea of the level
of control that it gives you, and you can
really go in, you can also use your
eyedropper tool here, and select a color
on the image, and then slide it back and
forth that way, and that's kind of an
easier way, rather than guessing what
colors the slider is going to select...
so that really is a great way to go in and
pick exactly how you want to convert
your image, because the computer doesn't
know which colors to make brighter, and
darker..
So for example if you were
shooting a scene where you had a lot of
trees...
you could choose to make the green
leaves on the trees darker or lighter in
your black and white conversion.
There's actually one more way to do it
and this is the way that I do on tour.
I use a plug-in it used to be made by Nic
software and now it is taken over by DXO
and thankfully they've brought this
program back to life, it's part of the
used to be the Nic collection, and it's
called silver effects Pro, and that
program what it does... they've actually
taken film profiles, and and made them
into presets, so the initial presets here
you've got of course, you're in neutral,
but then there are, I don't know, dozens
of presets here, and you can come in.
There's a low-key preset here, there's a
push processing preset...
These are all kind of based on old film
styles...
there are more sepia toned and different ways
you can go with that, and then when you
find something you like, you can also go
in and make all kinds of different
adjustments here.
I'm not going to go through every single
one of them, because there are many,
but I actually have one
where I got it looking exactly how I
want it, and then I've saved that recipe
as a custom preset.
So all I have to do is click that,
and it's pretty cool how I
like my images, and I you then you can
adjust the brightness a little bit if
you want.
You wanna bring that image up
just a tad... structure is kind of like
clarity in Photoshop, you can bring that
up or down, that really makes those
clouds pop out a little more..
So that's how I do my black and white
images on tour..
It's the fastest way.
I think it's great quality,
and it works really really well.
So hey that gives you an idea of the many
things you can do to create great black
and white pictures.
Thanks so much for that question, don't
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Don't forget to come back here
next week for Ask David Bergman..
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I'll see you back
here next time.