...

Black and white photography in the digital age. Part 2: how to create a black and white picture from a digital file?

Photo Technique

So you decided to have a taste of black and white photography. This is the right decision. That is the only way for the artist to appreciate new technologies, new materials, new subjects. When Kazimir Malevich, the author of the famous “Black Square”, came to teach in Vitebsk, another, no less talented and famous artist, Mark Chagall, who also taught at the Vitebsk Art School, wanted to understand what the Black Square was and why all students were fascinated by it. And Chagall began painting Black Square on the streets of Vitebsk, along with his flying couples, goats playing the violin, and other characters. That is, to understand and feel black and white photography, you have to take at least a couple dozen black and white photos.

Photographer Evgeny Artemov o

Graduated from VGIK department of cinematography.

Worked as a cameraman at the APN Editorial Board.

Since 1977, a member of the United Committee of Graphic Artists of the city of St. Petersburg. I had worked in New York, in various editorial offices, publishing houses, agencies, and so on.

Participant of many photo exhibitions.

Photographs of E. The works by Artemov are held in the collections of the Slavonic Library in Paris, the American Museum in St. Petersburg, in private collections in France, Germany, the USA and America.

Currently a teacher at the StudioA photo school, f-f-f

Of course, the most important thing in a picture is its content. This is the soul of the picture. The body of the picture is the shell in which the soul lives. A black-and-white picture is a photo snapshot in the direct meaning of the word. The body of a black and white photo is based on the play of light, the contrast of light and shade, the contrast of black and white. It is possible to build a black and white picture on the nuances of tone, but this is a more complicated path that requires some skill.

Photo equipment

Photo 000-Al-Slus-1980

Alexander Sliussarev and Leonid Bazhanov now Artistic Director of NCCA , 1980s.

What to shoot black and white digital photos with?

With your digital camera! There are special cameras for black and white photography that do not have a Bayer filter array, so they only capture the brightness of the object e.g. Leica Monochrom or Achromatic+ digital medium format backdrop . They have the advantage of high sharpness and a huge range of halftones. But when shooting with these cameras, you can only adjust the brightness ratios of the different color textures within the frame with shooting filters, just like in black and white analog photography.

Color images taken with your digital camera allow you to change brightness of different textures under the control of your monitor and to obtain different tonal solutions for the same picture.

Let’s look at the process of obtaining a black and white image on the example of my etude “Remembering Alexander Sliussarev”. This image was exhibited at the second Photobiennale of Contemporary Photography of the American Museum in St. Petersburg. Etude from the French. etude – study – a work shot by a photographer for the purpose of studying and developing some aspect of photography. The study has no pretensions to completeness, it is a sketch, a training exercise.

Alexander Sliussarev, among his “squares”, has a shot of a lone volleyball net on the beach. I saw a similar grid in Repino, remembered Alexander, got upset and wanted to try shooting the subject myself. I found my vantage point the first thing a field photographer should do and waited for the shadow of the building to cover the foreground. A black and white photo needs contrast, and my subject needed drama and sadness, so I needed a shadow.

Nikon D700 camera with a Tamron 17-35/2,8-4 lens was used to take several takes. The lens is very light, sharp, distortion is well corrected.

The resulting NEF Nikon RAW files were then converted to TIF 16 bit with my favorite RPP converter, developed by a wonderful programmer and photographer Andrey Tverdokhleb from California. I used L*-gamma for the conversion, since I was planning to do some serious processing in Photoshop.

Photo equipment

ell. 1

The resultant image Fig. 4 shows a black-and-white preview of the “DxO FilmPack” image. 1 You can see the red grid on the red posts on the blue background of the sea and sky. Note the low contrast and the absence of completely black and white textures in the image – this is necessary for further processing.

When converting a color image to black and white, photographers solve two different problems.

First, it is possible to stylize a digital image as an analog image taken on a particular type of film and printed on a particular type of photographic paper. The easiest way to perform this task is with the help of special programs and plug-ins for Photoshop DxO FilmPack, Nik Silver Efex, Imagenomic Real Grain, Perfect Black & White and the like .

Photo equipment

ill. 2

Fig. 2 DxO FilmPack window shown. Below are previews of presets, straight from your frame, for different types of film. On the right are more precise adjustments for grain count, grain size, and many other parameters. The effect is conditional, it is not an exact recreation of an analog image.

Secondly, you can independently set all parameters of a black-and-white image, such as brightness of the sky, greens, faces contrast, sharpness, grain texture of the film, and many others with the help of Photoshop.

You can find a lot of ways on the Internet to turn color into black and white, from the simplest straightforward bleaching to the most sophisticated. Most of them are designed to produce some kind of effect. Since I want full control, not effects, I most often use the features of Photoshop tools, of which I especially like two: “Black & White” and “Channel Mixing”.

Alexander Slyusarev’s photo shows a white grid against a background of dark sea and sky. This is an analog image and I think that Alexander used an orange filter in his work. In my case, this tonal solution is easily obtained with the “Black & White” tool, brightening the reds and darkening the blues and blues.

Photo Technique

ill. 3

Photo Technique

Ill.4

In Fig. 3 shows the positions of the sliders, and Fig. 4 – the result. Note: I used the Black & White tool as an adjustment layer. Layers are the most progressive way of non-destructive processing in Photoshop.

I found this image to be too cheerful and bravura. It turned out more joyful than Alexander’s shot. And I was feeling sad when I took the picture! Alexander Sliussarev is no longer with us, and his white grid seemed to me mournful, black, contrasts smoothed, and the day was not sunny but overcast. I’ve darkened the reds a lot and lightened the blues with the same Black & White tool. Now the bravura was gone and the result was much more in keeping with my idea.

Photo Technique

Ill. 5

The positions of engines for this variant are shown on illus. 5.

Photo Technique

Ell. 6

The settings of the “Channel Mixing” tool, which gives the same result, are shown in Fig. 6. Notice the “Monochrome” checkbox at the top of the tool settings window.

Photo Technique

ill. 7

The picture is still low-contrast and pale. I enhanced the contrast with the “Curves” tool, the settings of which are shown in Fig. 7, and this is also the adjustment layer.

Photo Technique

ill.8

The result is shown in Fig. 8. Compare it with the original version Fig. 4 . The two images are completely different in mood and tone. Both are from the same color file!

All further work should be oriented to how the finished picture will be used: for posting on the Internet or for printing more specifically, for what type of printing, on what printer, on what paper, and of what size .

I was going to print my picture to the size of 50 cm on the long side to satisfy the requirement for prints for the Photobiennale of the American Museum . Printer – Epson 4800, Piezografi graphite ink, Arches Hot Press paper, smooth, uncoated to accept ink. The native resolution of the printer, which is determined by the number of nozzles in the head, is 360 dpi. I first enlarged the image with PhotoZoom Pro S-Spline-XL method .

You can also resize images in Photoshop, adding 10-15% to the original size in just a few steps. It is important to get the shot to the right size first, and only then add sharpening and, if necessary, grain. I resized my photo, saved the file and then sharpened it in Photoshop with “Contour Sharpness” tool with the radius of 0.75 pixels and effect of 200. Then I took the “Archive Brush”, which selectively cancels the result of the last Photoshop operation, and completely removed the sharpening from the entire background: from the horizon, from the sea, from the bushes in the background. That way I improved the separation, the volume and the depth of the picture. It’s a pity this effect is lost in print reproduction. You can blur the background with another tool – “Blur”.

Then I added digital noise. The digital noise produced by bitmap editing software is quite different from the noise produced by digital cameras under unfavorable shooting conditions. And different programs add different noise. The noise added by PhotoZoom Pro is very fine the noise generated by Photoshop is much coarser.

Why do I need to add digital noise? I didn’t set out to get an imitation of a film photograph. I was only remembering Alexander Sliussarev, not imitating him. That’s why I didn’t want to imitate grain on film. Noise of the right size, added in the right amount, solves several problems at the same time. First, it visually sharpens the image. Second, it increases the amount of halftones in the image, which is again visually perceivable. Thirdly, it gives the impression of a smoother, cleaner photo in print. Designers working for printing add noise to all continuous gradients, and photography is one huge gradient.

Photo equipment

Ill.9

On Ill. 9 shows the PhotoZoom Pro settings I used to increase the size you can also see the digital noise setting there.

If you want to imitate analog grain, the easiest way is to download a scan of real grain from the Internet, apply it as a new layer on top of your image in Photoshop in “Darken” or “Overlay” blending mode, and adjust the transparency of the grain layer. Of course, nothing prevents you from experimenting with other blending modes.

I tried to do both digital noise and film grain, but my pictures turned out unnatural and “photoshopped”. Noise increases sharpness, grain slightly decreases it noise makes the image smooth, grain makes it rough. This struggle of opposites in my experiments did not lead to anything good.

I want to point out that the popular opinion on the Internet that grain is film noise is wrong.

Film noise can be thought of as veil, while grain is the basis of a film image just as pixels are the basis of a digital image . The grain is differently distributed in the image: in the mid-tones it is more noticeable than in shadows and in highlights, in the sharpness zone it is unnoticeable, and in the black and white photo each texture has its own, different from the neighboring textures, the grain structure. As a result, images with a reasonable amount of finesse appear more three-dimensional, the textures of different surfaces are better perceived by the eye, and the number of halftones of the image visually increases. This is why the famous photographer Georgy Kolosov believes that grain in black and white analog photography is of great benefit.

If you are imitating an analog photograph, you will need to reproduce the tone of the through channel negative – enlarger – positive. It is a common assumption that the S-curve in the Curves tool mimics the tonal reproduction of black and white analog photoprocessing. That’s not true. The Adobe Camera RAW converter offers a choice between a linear gamut there, the tone transfer function is linear and two S-curves medium and strong contrast .

But using S-curves doesn’t give the feeling of film photography, and it’s not called that in Photoshop. The tone-value curve of analog photographic process is most reliably investigated by F. With. Pyatnitsky in his book “Color Management and Color Reproduction” and cinematographer Valentin Zheleznyakov in his book “Color and Contrast”. . Zeleznyakov believes that the tone curve has a kink in the area of 20% brightness, the contrast in the shadows is smoothed, while in the lights on the contrast, it is increased. Different contrasts of film and paper and density of the negative give different variants of the curve with the same general shape.

Photo equipment

See . 10

In Fig. 10 Here is a screenshot of the curve. Note that the inflection is at about division 50 of the luminance input value. In my experience, this curve most faithfully imitates the tone reproduction of an analog black-and-white photographic print. You must move the inflection point of the curve left and right and up and down to find the curve that best suits your subject.

To finish, here’s another important case of using the Channel Mixing tool.

The “Last Trolleybus” study I shot on Leningradsky Prospekt at about 2 a.m. Nikon D700, 6400 ISO, 1/6 second shutter speed. Nikkor 10-24mm lens. The original light from sodium lamps in street lighting is yellow there is no blue component in the spectrum of these lamps . If we look at the RGB image channel by channel, we can see that the Blue channel is severely underexposed. It is noisy and spoils the image as a whole. With “Channel Mixer” we can completely eliminate the influence of blue and any other channel on the final image.

Photo Technique

ile.11

In Ill. 11 – blue channel fragment,

Photo equipment

ill.12

on ill. 12 – Adjusting the “Channel Mixing” tool,

PhotoPlay

illustration:. 13

on the ill. 13 – final image.

P. S.

On May 12 this year, at Georgy Kolosov’s seminar at PhotoPlay, we once again compared different ways of printing black and white photos from a digital file. The best result, not much different from analogue photography, is obtained with digital negative which was described in the first part of the article № 1 44 of 2013 .

Good luck to you and beautiful photos!

Rate this article
( No ratings yet )
John Techno

Greetings, everyone! I am John Techno, and my expedition in the realm of household appliances has been a thrilling adventure spanning over 30 years. What began as a curiosity about the mechanics of these everyday marvels transformed into a fulfilling career journey.

Home appliances. Televisions. Computers. Photo equipment. Reviews and tests. How to choose and buy.
Comments: 3
  1. Rhiannon

    I’m curious about the process of converting a digital image into a black and white photograph. Are there specific techniques or software that professionals use? Is it as effective as shooting directly in black and white? I’d love to hear some tips on how to achieve stunning black and white images in the digital age.

    Reply
  2. Rhiannon

    I’m really curious to know the different methods of converting a digital image into black and white. Are there any specific software or techniques you would recommend for achieving the best results? And does the conversion process differ depending on the desired tone or mood of the final black and white image?

    Reply
  3. Nathan Reyes

    I’m really curious to know how to transform a digital file into a black and white photograph. Could you please provide some insights or techniques on how to achieve that?

    Reply
Add Comments