Comments on: Are You Making These Mistakes With Your Black and Whites?

By: Beth

Beth — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:49:15 +0000

like daniel, i want to know how should themonitor be set.

By: video

video — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 09:20:44 +0000

Good posting, thanks a lot!

By: Things that make me go oooOOOOO | December @ University

Things that make me go oooOOOOO | December @ University — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 14:20:59 +0000

[...] Common B + W Mistakes [...]

By: Julián Alzate

Julián Alzate — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 19:09:13 +0000

It´s good to know that I am doing my B&W photos quite right, of course I have a lot to learn, I´m just a Begginer, really a begginer in this but feels like I´m going the right way, nice article, just one thing, the monitor settings, what would be the best settings?, I´m lost in that one.

By: KMC

KMC — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 09:59:00 +0000

Great Post… really helpful…. I used to use Greyscale a lot and most of the time hated the results… but in older versions of photoshop there was no Black & White under the adjustments menu.. until CS3 I think! Is there any websites that you can download B&W presets for Photoshop?

By: Roman

Roman — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 03:20:40 +0000

This is one from my black & white series. Once just got out to the street and did try to make a completely BW set.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mromka/4688431536/

By: Daniel

Daniel — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 23:12:41 +0000

If I shouldn’t set my monitor to 100% brightness when edit/convert to b&w, what should I set it to?

By: mark

mark — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:04:35 +0000

great post! i am sure i can teach this to my students

By: Jim-san

Jim-san — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 06:33:31 +0000

Although I really like the advice you give here, and thank you for the pointers, I feel that “Avoid in-camera black and white mode” is really poor advice. Unfortunately post processing has made it too easy to convert to black and white these days, but converting to black and white does not help you to THINK in black and white. I believe taking pictures in black and white is a totally different process to colour photography. When you strip away all the colours all you have is shapes, composition and LIGHT. Photography students have been using black and white to learn photography even well after the development of colour film, and this is not because it ‘looks more arty’ but it helps you to see photographically. You can learn to see and think in terms of contrast and light. Ultimately light is the most important factor to photography and I believe people should embrace the B&W mode in their camera and shoot in black and white for at lest a little while. Maybe just a day, a week, or a month. But saying that you don’t need to shoot in black and white because you can do it much better at home on your computer is like saying that you don’t need to buy a prime lens if you have a zoom lens. The process of taking a picture is simply different.

By: Glayva

Glayva — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:32:39 +0000

An excellent article and great that someone spells it out as it should be. Understanding that you can’t get a great B&W unless you start with a great color photo in the first place.