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The power of Lightroom has been so well documented from various outlets across the internet and magazines, I often find it surprising that such a small amount of space is dedicated to black and white photography.  This month, I’d like to take an opportunity to delve more into the creative adjustments you can make in Lightroom to bring out more in an image than just shades of gray!

There are two areas in Lightroom where you can make creative adjustments to the color to make things pop.  The first two HSL (for Hue, Saturation, and Luminance) and Color are great resources to use when you want to massage the color palette of your image.  The Black and White “tab” though, is where it’s really at.  When you click this tab, the image will be converted to an automated black and white adjustment, where the colors are converted to shades of gray – with no color tones at all.  This is where I’d like to begin the exploration:

While this can be a powerful way to present an image, the automated method of conversion is not going to work all the time (and for my tastes rarely does the default conversion work).  So, you have to dive in and really get comfortable with adjusting color tones.  To start off, I am using a pretty basic image – a red flower, and you can see that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the colored version of the image.

It’s got some great black and white potential though, so let’s go ahead and take it into the BW adjustment panel tab.  When I do that, the automated adjustments will kick in:

It looks interesting, but let’s see what massaging the colors just in the panel can do.  To start, since the flower was red and made up nearly 95% of the composition, I started with the red slider to see what the extremes would do on each end.  Here’s the image with the red slider taken up to +100 and then to the opposite extreme of -100…

In both cases, for me it’s an absolutely hideous image.  Clearly, there is a balance that must be struck somewhere in the middle – the question is where?  Well, now it comes down to subjective tastes.  For me, the default adjustment had the red a bit too strong – which kind of hid the morning dew of the flower, so I dialed things back a bit, taking the red slider from +22 to -20.  The droplets are now much more visible as they are standing out from the petals!

So, now we are getting somewhere fun!  I tested a few more sliders, and ended up with the yellows and oranges slightly higher than the default settings, just to give a bit more contrast.  Here’s what it looks like after the black and white adjustments are made:

Of course there is always a bit of sharpening and noise reduction to make in post production, as well as lens correction, and even a little bit of vignette from time to time to help draw the viewer in.  Once these are done, the final image definitely has a creative look and feel to it:

It’s clearly not easy to decide both when, to make a black and white conversion, as well as how much to massage or tweak it to your tastes.  The ultimate decision is, of course, up to you as an artist and photographer, but you can’t get there by avoiding the Black-and-White panel!  Take some time to explore it!

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There’s more to the article than that, and it has been modified somewhat to make for a better blog post, so be sure you subscribe to the PhotographyBB newsletter when you have a minute.  It is free, after all, and probably one of the best sources of a diverse set of reading material you can find.  Dave Seeram, the editor, has been quite generous with his kindness and patience in my contributions!  Please stop over and give him your thanks as well…nothing but learning and knowledge to gain!

As always though, I end up being more curious than informative!  What types of black and white adjustments do you make?  Do you prefer the neutral grays, or do you like to add a hint of color to your b/w images too?  What methods have you found useful versus not so much?  Sound off in the comments as I love to hear how others are working through their own images!  Happy shooting and we’ll see you next time right here!

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To start, I took an image and pulled it into Photoshop.  Realizing that I would need to do some virtually identical steps across several images, on the first one, I started the process of creating an action.  The action in essence, creates a duplicate layer of the image, converts it to black and white, then repeats the duplication for another 9 black and white layer copies.  So, ultimately your Layer panel has 11 layers to it – 10 black and white layers and one color layer (at the bottom).

Next, I went to each layer and adjusted the opacity down by 10%.  So, the top layer was at 100% opacity, then 90%, then 80%, etc, etc, all the way down to 10%.  At this point I stopped recording the action.  Now, it was a simple matter of saving each of the 11 total images to a folder.  I started with the full layer set visible and saved to web (Control+ALT=Shift+S).  I saved to a specific folder so that each subsequent image could easily be numbered sequentially for easier management later.  In the end, I had 11 images, numbered 1-11.

For the final step, I opened my video editor (Camtasia) and imported the media.  Here it now may take some trial and error to determine image length, transition length, and if you want titles included.  Next, I picked some audio from the native library and added to the time line.  After clipping and taking the last few seconds for a fade out, the slide show was done. All I had to do now was export and share.

In Camtasia, there are many options to choose from for sharing your work online, from Screencast.net (their host) to YouTube, exporting as Flash, .mov files, .avi files, and many other options.  Here you should choose the one that works best for you and your needs.

Last but not least, it’s just a matter of either exporting the video you created and uploading either to your own host through FTP, or using the native interface to export to any one of a number of video hosting services as mentioned above.

For those interested in giving it a whirl, here’s the action I put together in 10% increments.  Feel free to experiment and try your own settings and percentages to style and taste as needed.

Black and White Layers

Got your own ideas for how to create new effects and appearances with stills in videos?  What are your thoughts on this technique?  Share your thoughts, comments, and feedback below or with me via email.

As a final reminder for the week, there’s limited time left on a couple of fronts:

1. The contest for July is about wrapped up – you still have a chance to enter to win a copy of Lightroom 3 from the folks over at Adobe, so don’t forget to sign up today!  Just submit your photo in the Flickr thread.
2. The Lightroom Workshop Series kicks off in a little over a week in Anaheim CA, with Denver following shortly thereafter.  We’ve also added some webinars for those who can’t attend an entire day, and more info coming on that.  We’d love to see you in on a workshop day though, so sign up soon as time and space are limited!  Signups are being handled over at Lightroom Dudes
3. Last but not least, the eBook is out of the gates and initial response has been overwhelming!  Thanks to everyone who has shared their thoughts and feedback on the sequel for 49 Photo Tips.   The 20% savings window is almost over too, so be sure to get your digital download before the end of the month.  After that, it’s regular price of $4.99

When we think of color, many of us are familiar with the three primaries. Red, Green, and Blue as these are letters of one of the most common color spaces (Adobe RGB).  Surely though, even though we may not consciously think about it, there are more than three colors out there.  Even the traditional axiom of a ROYGBIV rainbow only indicates 7 colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet), and there are way more than that within the color spectrum.  So, let’s take a look at the entire spectrum of color:

The Color Spectrum

Since colors represent particular wavelengths of light, you can see how light and color tie into one another very quickly.  Just because you define something as “red”, doesn’t give a complete description of that color, because there can be so many nuances, shades, hues, or wavelengths of red.  So, in understanding that color is something we can control for, it’s first helpful to know that you are still controlling for luminance, light, or contrast while also controlling for color, because the shades you let come through in your photos will also be somewhat controlled by the amount of contrast, luminance, or light.

Another way in which color can control how people view and perceive your images is to understand the idea behind complementary colors.  Some colors work well together, while others don’t.  For instance, take a look at the photo below:

Yellow Flowers

So, in looking at this photo – which do you think the contrasting colors are?  A typical kneejerk reaction would be to say the yellow and the black are the two contrasting colors.  Black though, really from a visual perspective means a total lack of color (black = nothing, white = everything…remember grade school?).  So, really the contrasting colors would probably be the yellow and what?  The greens of the stems or the browns of the center?  A case could be made for either, but I am going to go with the browns here.  If you look back at the color spectrum, you can see that yellow and brown are relatively close together (as are yellow and green) – they are actually right next to one another – so they complement each other nicely.  It’s also no accident that these colors are in use with the black background too.  Because the colors are of the brighter variety, they look better with a darker background.  There’s two elements of color at play here then, complementary colors (colors that work well together due to proximity on the color spectrum) and color luminance (light versus dark colors).  If you want a lighter color to stand out, then place it in a scene where the rest of the background is either much darker (or vice versa).  To show how this works, look at the same image when I replace the background with white rather than black:

Bad color control

See how brighter colors look with a brighter background?  Now granted, the mask job was  rather quick and messy, but you can see how the colors and their background can have a huge impact on the quality of your work.  While this speaks more to the luminance and contrast factor from yesterday, it can also help in understanding how to position colors in your work so subjects can get the attention they deserve.  Pretty cool, eh?

So, which are your favorite complementary colors?  Do you like the yellows and greens?  Or the red and blues?  Or violets and purples?  Don’t forget color shades too – as light never really leaves the picture (both figuratively and literally speaking)!  Which scenes do you like?  Answering these questions in not only the works of others, but also in your own work can help develop your sense of style and define what makes your work unique, so embrace your originality!  Sound off in the comments with your take on controlling color in your images!

In other news, I’m also rolling out some new headers for the blog this week.  I’ve finally had a chance to go through my archives with”blog header” in my mind, and found quite a few that work quite well (imho).  So, stop in over the course of this week to see a new blog header image every day!)  Also, feel free to share your thoughts and feedback in the comments section.

I’d also like to put out a reminder about the poll on the sidebar (“Has the economy affected your photography purchasing?”)…only 5 days left to participate in that (poll closes this Friday).  Also, the TWIP Photo contest is still going on, so you can enter to win a Drobo if you’re interested.  If you already have a backup solution in place, then stop over and vote for my contributed shot, as I really could use something better than a single WD Mybook setup.  That picture is also in the sidebar of the blog, and directs you to the Photrade site where you can register, vote, and participate with your own images.  It’s all free, so help a fellow photog out by stopping in to vote.  Only 10 days or so left in that contest too!

That’s it from the CB side of life for this Monday morning.  It will turn colder later this week with temps dropping below freezing, so that should push even more colors into the leaves, so I’ll see what I can do for some more colorful photos on Thursday or Friday.  How is the color where everyone else is?  Any other  captures of the fall foliage?  I’d love to see what others have got thus far, so feel free to share links in the comments.  Hope everyone else had a great weekend too.  Happy shooting, and we’l catch you back here tomorrow.

To give you an idea of how images can benefit from noise, take a look at the following two shots.  First the color:

And how the black and white:

See how the grain from the image really accentuates his facial features?  That’s one way in which noise/grain can enhance an image.

So, what about noise in your images?  Do you like it or not?  Got ideas for how noise can enhance your creativity?  Sound off in the comments!  Until tomorrow, happy shooting, and as always, keep watching those apertures!