Your Perfect B&W Print

One of the artivles I read this week was "Your Perfect B&W Print" in Outdoor Photographer by Ming Tshing. I as intrigued by this article for two reason. The first was that I have always liked black and white prints. The contrast and simplicity of the images often make them more attractive to me than full color images. The second reason was the content of the article. It was relatively long, probably three full pages of print, and I never thought it should take that many pages to explain how to make a black and white print. I didn't think it was any more complicated than hitting the button to convert it. Apparently, I was wrong.

I first learned about setting a black point and a white point. Although I had never heard of this before, it seemed simple just from the name. But it turns out, in many images, it may not be as simple as picking the darkest and lightest pixels. You have to visually identify the area you want to be black, and may sacrifice detail in the shadows in order to keep detail in lighter areas of the image, and the same goes for white. Picking good black and white points can result in a more defined image. In landscapes that should not have a lot of contrast, like foggy ones, picking a black and white point is not the way to go.

Shadows/Highlights is an adjustment tool that got a lot of attention in this article. The tool is used to recover shadow and highlight areas. There are also adjustments to make to specific regions of the image, adjustments to midtone contrast, and sharpening the image. The artticle ends by saying even all of this is not the only work to be done for black and white images. Over all, I learned a lot from this article, and have more respect for the amount of work that goes into creating a good black and white print, something I no longer think is simple.

"Your Pefect B&W Print", Outdoor Photographer, August 2010 by Ming Tshing