“Capturing Alaska”
with Wayde Carroll






Black & White Conversion

I was somewhat taken aback several weeks ago when I posted color and black and white images of bohemian waxwings in one of the blogs. Obviously I thought they were nice images but I was surprised at how many people just loved the black and white photo. It reminded me that we have a great love affair with the “traditional” way of making photographs.
As a digital photographer I shoot everything in color and in RAW. I can set my camera to shoot only in black and white but I am uncomfortable throwing out the possibility for a great color image. If you shoot in B&W you can’t bring back the color but you can go the other way around.
There are many ways to convert your color images into B&W’s, some are extremely complicated, though give amazing results, and some are very simple, and yield sub-par images.
I wanted to share with you a moderately simple process that I use to get very satisfying results.
In bygone days you would need to carry around a set of filters to achieve optimum results, even for black and white photography. If you wanted to make the puffy white clouds pop out against the blue sky you would use a red filter. If you had varying shades of green foliage a green filter would help add contrast between them. Etc. Etc. This method lets you use sliders to emulate the effect of filters.
I’m sorry if I exclude any of you but this is done in Photoshop, which is the premiere photo editing software, bar none. (I am still currently using version CS2)
Ok, first of all, not every photo looks good as a black and white image. There are many variables that make up a great image but for monotone images contrast is one of the biggies. Sure you can have wonderful images without contrast but the most striking have deep blacks and pure whites (in general). After you’ve taken a lot of images, or converted them from color files, you start to “see” what would make a good B&W photo. So experiment (a lot!) and have fun.
Here’s my procedure:

1) Open your image in Photoshop.
2) Go to the “Layers” screen and click on half white/half black the circle on the bottom. This will create an adjustment layer. Choose HUE/SATURATION and click.
3) Click on the SATURATION slider and drag it all the way to the left. Click OK. This creates a new layer that de-saturates the image and gives you a grayscale photo, but not the best you can achieve!
4) Now, go up to the selection bar that says “Normal”, click on it and scroll down to “color” and click on that. You’ll see your image change a bit. Now for the fun!
5) In your LAYERS palette click on the “background” photo so that it is highlighted. (selected)
6) At the top of your computer screen click on “Image”, then “ADJUSTMENTS”, then “HUE/SATURATION”.
7) Start experimenting by sliding the “HUE” and “Saturation” sliders slowly back and forth. Watch how the varying tones shift and emulate color filters. Adjust them to your liking and click “OK”.
8) Select “Layer” at the top of your screen. Scroll down to “Flatten Image” and click.
9) Save your image in whatever format you prefer. (JPG, TIFF etc.) If you shoot in JPG make sure you save your black and white conversion as a different name or you will lose your original color file!
10) Finally, I usually adjust the contrast a bit as a final step!

I’ve uploaded “before” and “after” images from a trip to Portage Lake and Whittier last weekend.

There you go! If you try it, let me know how it works out!