Black and White and Grayscale conversion are two entirely different concepts, often confused since there is a very thin line segregating the both.
I have been waiting to try my hands on Black and White and have never been happy with the grayscale conversion that Picasa or Picnik or anyother free photo-editing software that is available offers.
Blindly converting it to the so called "black and white" takes away the life of the otherwise beautiful picture when not done prepoerly. Black and White conversion is supposed to add more life or more drama to the scene and should not be taking out the life of the picture.
All the black and white conversion I have done in the past looked either muddy or flat, or too gray or too bland.
And now, by that I dont claim that I have done a great job with this bunch of b&w conversions (disclaimer) and I bet I will come up with better conversions again in another 2 months with the same set of pictures since I am still learning going by the example- the pictures that I edit this week looks better than the ones that I edited last week.
The basics to get a better b&w shots are:
* Never shoot in B&W mode that is available in the camera settings. Converting them to b&w later is a lot simple than regretting to have taken the shot in color.
* High contrast shots are great for this.
* Lighting could possibly add some drama to the scene.
* Shoot at the lowest ISO
* Like it is always said, shoot in RAW. It works like a charm when taken for editing.
A few B&W conversions that I attempted:
THe order is Original- "do it all for me" conversion, and the "attempted" b&w conversion. I like the drama of over-exposed sky and the sail against the gray water than the overall gray scale found in the second picture.
The following one is definitely going to be easy on the eyes. In the order Original - auto conversion - manual conversion.
And some conversions which were genuinely not attempted anywhere else, but waited and done manually :
On the very last picture, I cringe for not having taken the whole circle and for having chopped off the top and bottom of it. Sigh!
Most of the pictures were taken in RAW (except for 1) and the conversions that I have done with PSE is very much possible to do with Picasa or Picnic too. It is all about putting the "contrast" to work to pull out a bit of drama into the scene.
I have been waiting to try my hands on Black and White and have never been happy with the grayscale conversion that Picasa or Picnik or anyother free photo-editing software that is available offers.
Blindly converting it to the so called "black and white" takes away the life of the otherwise beautiful picture when not done prepoerly. Black and White conversion is supposed to add more life or more drama to the scene and should not be taking out the life of the picture.
All the black and white conversion I have done in the past looked either muddy or flat, or too gray or too bland.
And now, by that I dont claim that I have done a great job with this bunch of b&w conversions (disclaimer) and I bet I will come up with better conversions again in another 2 months with the same set of pictures since I am still learning going by the example- the pictures that I edit this week looks better than the ones that I edited last week.
The basics to get a better b&w shots are:
* Never shoot in B&W mode that is available in the camera settings. Converting them to b&w later is a lot simple than regretting to have taken the shot in color.
* High contrast shots are great for this.
* Lighting could possibly add some drama to the scene.
* Shoot at the lowest ISO
* Like it is always said, shoot in RAW. It works like a charm when taken for editing.
A few B&W conversions that I attempted:
THe order is Original- "do it all for me" conversion, and the "attempted" b&w conversion. I like the drama of over-exposed sky and the sail against the gray water than the overall gray scale found in the second picture.
The following one is definitely going to be easy on the eyes. In the order Original - auto conversion - manual conversion.
With a tight crop to compose the picture + tad bit of increasing the contrast + brightness to B&W pop up worked better than the all auto B&W conversion. This above formula is very much possible with picnic or picasa too. Just that there is also the "auto b&w" option readily available and more easily accessible just to pamper us.
A few more in the order auto - manual conversion:
And some conversions which were genuinely not attempted anywhere else, but waited and done manually :
On the very last picture, I cringe for not having taken the whole circle and for having chopped off the top and bottom of it. Sigh!
Most of the pictures were taken in RAW (except for 1) and the conversions that I have done with PSE is very much possible to do with Picasa or Picnic too. It is all about putting the "contrast" to work to pull out a bit of drama into the scene.
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