Black and White Digital Photography. First Steps

There are several ways to achieve black and white digital photography. With black and white digital photography, you are bringing the end-user back into a period of time when life seemed a lot simpler. Many digital cameras come equipped with a function to take these types of photos. If your digital camera does not support this function, you can still change your photographs into black and white with software programs.

As we all know, there are times in our lives when the priority is to shoot black and white images. That happens to me a lot. I want to get rid of colour to accentuate shapes or just because it is aesthetically pleasing. Black and White photography is not necessarily simpler than colour photography, but it offers a whole different set of challenges and possibilities.

There are several ways to achieve black and white digital photography. With black and white digital photography, you are bringing the end-user back into a period of time when life seemed a lot simpler. Many digital cameras come equipped with a function to take these types of photos. If your digital camera does not support this function, you can still change your photographs into black and white with software programs. Some camera shot only in Black and White!

You will want your black and white digital photography to look its best when you are finished. A technique that can help you get the best image out of your digital photograph is through image manipulation. You may find it better to convert your eight-bit colour images (which are usually jpegs) into 16-bit colours first. This is important because an 8-bit RGB can be the same as a 10-bit grayscale.

You can find information all over the Internet to help you with your black and white digital photography. These resources can be found in everything from websites to magazines. Coloured pictures can look truly beautiful as a black and white display. You will usually have to convert your graphics because although there are options with digital cameras, there are no true black and white digital cameras.

My favourite app/program is Silver Efex Pro, that creates extraordinary photos using unique black & white algorithms and adjustments inspired by darkroom techniques. Change luminosity and contrast, brighten whites, apply colour filters, and even adjust density and grain!

TIP!!! Correct the Colorcasts

An important part of black and white digital photography is correcting the colorcasts. These are caused by bad lighting, but you can use software such as PhotoShop Elements to make the relevant changes by using their editing applications. The Imaging Factory is also software that can help you to easily convert and fix lighting areas in your graphics to get the best look with your black and white digital photography. If you want to turn your graphics into black and white digital photography, you can step into a completely new dimension in photography. You can do an endless array of projects right from your own computer.