Bit of a stupid question

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mattmac

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Matt
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Sorry if this seems like the stupidest thing asked but...

When taking B&W shots, how do you make them B&W

Is there a setting on the camera or is it done in PS or whatever PP package

Dont have my camera yet so I'm still a bit... bleh
 
I just wack the saturation right down, and the contrast right up in Adobe camera raw.
 
Can be done in camera or in ps. I would always do it in ps as you have far more choice in how the final image will look.
 
It's probably better done in post processing than in camera. Photoshop, lightroom, whatever...
 
Ah right, was just wondering what most people do. I suppose if you shoot in colour, then you can choose whether it looks better in B&W or colour
 
mattmac said:
Ah right, was just wondering what most people do. I suppose if you shoot in colour, then you can choose whether it looks better in B&W or colour
Click to expand...

spot on matt. If you shoot it in colour in the first place you've always got a choice.
 
I've used both in camera and photoshop to do it.

Once I've messed around with contrast etc, I can't say if one is better than the other!
 
In Camera loses the colour info.
PP means that you can simulate different filters such as red to darken skies etc
 
mattmac said:
Ah right, was just wondering what most people do. I suppose if you shoot in colour, then you can choose whether it looks better in B&W or colour
Click to expand...

You should decide before you shoot really. As your metering, composition etc may be different in b&w or colour.

Then take the RAW file into PS and use a b&w adjustment layer to control the conversion. (Or some other package like Lightroom that gives you similar control). Simply de-saturating isn't a good way to go about it. :thumbs:
 
If you shoot both Raw and JPEG simultaneously, and set the camera to black & white, the JPEG will be mono and give you a pretty good result. And while the Raw file will have the monochrome adjustments tagged to it, the full colour Raw file remains intact. So you can either stick with the mono JPEG conversion that the camera has made, or tweak it a bit, or start afresh with the unadulerated Raw file.

In other words, shoot Raw and JPEG, and you can't lose.
 
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