I’ve been playing with Photoshop the last few days, trying to get a decent black and white portrait, but none of the conversions I was trying came up with very good results.
Then I came across this tutorial on creating high-key black and white portraits over at DPhotoJournal. It’s a very simple but effective technique and I’m getting much better results with it.
The rest of the site looks pretty good too – a mix of reviews, tutorials, free downloads and photographs. If you’re interested in photography it’s worth having a look around.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Simon Crabb // 25th Apr 2009 at 10:56 pm
I used to do black and white film photography and darkroom work. The technique they describe is very interesting, it reminds me a lot of real b&w development, burning in the image under the enlarger, over exposing some parts and underexposing others.
I’ve never really played with images digitally, perhaps I’m missing out on something, I’m never quite sure where to start – especially with colour.
Perhaps I need to return to b&w again!
2 Pewari // 26th Apr 2009 at 9:54 am
That’s interesting, Simon – hadn’t really considered if it was similar steps to film development. Makes sense though.
If you have photoshop, the book that helped it all click into place (for me) was Scott Kelby’s “7-point system” book. He takes you through a very simple route you can use every time to quickly make an image look much better in a non-destructive way.
While I’ve added other techniques since then, I still use most of the tips in his book on a regular basis.
3 Ian // 26th Apr 2009 at 3:13 pm
I can’t remember who told me, but one game artist I worked with said that he used to split RGB channels, and use the different channels in the way you describe, depending on the subject.
I can’t remember the exact details, but apparently B+W film is not equisensitive to all wavelengths, so doing a color shot conversion to B+W looks wrong. I *think* it was the red channel that he used directly, then added faded blurred versions of the other channels to provide warmth. But don’t quote me. May be worth a play though.
Ian.
4 Pewari // 26th Apr 2009 at 3:17 pm
Thanks for the tip, Ian. I’ll experiment a bit.
5 Gordon // 26th Apr 2009 at 3:51 pm
Ohhh this is very timely, I’ve been struggling with this very thing. Off to play with this now, thanks!
6 Pewari // 27th Apr 2009 at 8:04 am
Glad to be of help, Gordon!
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