As I've realised recently, there are about a million shades of gray, which is what you're dealing with in a black and white photo. It's all about the contrasts between variations of gray.
What I love about Kelby's books, is their simplicity - he uses a lot of words to get across each concept, but ultimately, the books are really easy to follow, particularly when you're using your own photos to work through the steps.
The image(s) above are an example of converting a RAW image to black and white, using one of Scott Kelby's "recipes".
Basically, he does much of his processing in Camera Raw, because it's easy to do there. Gotta love that!
Basically, the steps he goes through to achieve a high contrast B/W conversion like this one are as follows:
- Click on the HSL/Grayscale icon (the 4th icon on the left in the main Camera Raw menu).
- Go back to the first Camera Raw editing tab and crank up to your exposure as high as it will go just until you start clipping the highlights (the book gives pictures here, which make it much easier to follow).
- Crank up the blacks, by dragging the Blacks slider to the right until it looks really contrasty.
- Go to the Tone Panel Curve and choose Strong Contrast from the pop up menu - or otherwise, just drag the Contrast slider to the right until the image looks really contrasty.
- Then, increase the Clarity to about 75 (or 25 for a portrait, or 0 for a baby, says Kelby)
- And that should be that!
What's your favourite black & white conversion technique?
. These books are never far from my reach, and are now dog-earred, much-loved references. As Scott says, reading these books is like having your own personal tutor, telling you how he shoots a multitude of scenes, and how he handles different lighting situations. They're SO full of practical advice at whatever level of photography you're at. I keep going back to these books time and time again! Perhaps it's because I'm a slow learner...
. What another awesome book! I sit with it at the computer and try techniques as I read. It's taking me a while to work my way through the book, but I practice as I go. It's also very practical and uses screen shots and before/after shots to show the effects in action.
. It's seriously easier to follow than the instruction manual! Ok, so it might seem a bit lame to watch video tutorials about which buttons do what, but the tutorials are helping me to learn more about my camera every day. For example, I have been meaning to test out the HD video function on the 5D, and when I watched a tutorial that walked me through the (very few and simple) steps, I tried it straight away. So cool!