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04.03.09
How to make the most of digital mono
Words by Will Cheung
Like almost everything in life, film black & white photography wasn’t fair. A photographer with a darkroom could exercise a level of creative control that couldn’t be matched by their mate taking their film down to Boots.
With digital, the playing field still isn’t level, but it is much more democratic than before. Digital photographers of all levels can enjoy black & white picture-making. Furthermore, they can do so without compromising their colour photography.
You can go mono at the taking stage or on the computer afterwards. Most DSLRs have a JPEG quality monochrome mode that offers a quick way to black & white photography but, personally, it’s an approach I’d only recommend in a couple of situations. When, for example, you haven’t got a computer at home or you need mono images quickly and there’s no time to do any post-production.
DSLRs like the Canon EOS 5D let you shoot Raw format and show the images on the monitor in black & white if the monochrome option is chosen. This will help if you don’t ‘see’ or can’t visualise in shades of grey and the Raw file can still be processed to give a colour image later if you change your mind.
Other models like the Nikon D300 can make a mono JPEG from a Raw file in-camera. If you want seriously good black & white, however, the way to go is, to shoot in Raw and spend time afterwards on the computer.
Even here there are plenty of options. You can simply change an image to greyscale or remove all the colours with the desaturate command. But there are better methods and that’s what we look at overleaf.
Using Adobe Camera Raw
Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) is built into Photoshop and Elements 6.0, although, as you might expect, the version for the latter is less sophisticated. ACR is regularly updated by Adobe to keep pace with new cameras.
Bring it on
Load the Raw file into ACR and you get a large preview window with various palettes of control sliders. The top array of controls comes under the banner of Basic. Here you can adjust exposure, tint and white-balance.
Going grey
Three buttons to the right of Basic, you come across HSL/Grayscale. Click on this and select Convert to Grayscale so the image goes mono. In the Grayscale Mix panel there are two options, Auto or Default. As we’re going to have a bit of a play, it doesn’t matter which one is active.
Just try the sliders
There are eight colour sliders. Move them to the left to darken subjects of that colour within the scene. For example, move the green slider to the left and the grass in the foreground will darken. In this image of Fountains Abbey, increasing the yellow values lightened the stonework and setting a lower blue value darkened the sky. When the image looks right, click 'Open Image' to open it in Photoshop.
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