03 Black and White starts with color?!

Andy, Nikon Z7ii 14mm ISO 100 f/5.6 1/125sec at Death Valley

So I found a missing tool this week that felt like I had something really click in terms of photo editing.

I learned that to create a black and white image you need color.

Yeah, what?

So here’s the deal without making this some kind of crazy long or confusing post. Until this week, I created black and white images by editing my color photo, then hitting the “make black and white” button in photoshop. Yes, it creates a black and white photo, but it kept feeling blah to me. It looked dull and hazy no matter what I was doing. That’s because I was losing all my color information. It turned my beautiful colors into a yucky mess of greywash. It didn’t matter how much I tried to bring it back, it looked simply dull.

I have since learned that if there’s a button or swipe to do it all, it’s likely the wrong way to do it. So we are going to talk about tone mapping, without using those words. This is a way to tell each color value in the image what value of Black or white to have and then apply that mapping to the entire image. This is a slow and deliberate process, but the outcome is getting closer to my desired state.

Full Color Wheel

Complementary colors opposite each other. This is the reference image used to determine the effect of our processing.

Desaturated Photo

Every single color is just translated to grey. Here we throw away all color information, and instead just rely on how bright the value of the pixel actually is (luminance channel alone).

Tone Mapped

Here every color is mapped to a particular white or black value giving a distinctly different B&W picture. This means that on top of how bright the value is, the color itself also informs the image how to render with a better resultant effect.

How does this translate to real images?

Full Color image

Nikon Z7ii 14mm ISO 100 f/5.6 1/125sec at Death Valley

Greyscale Image

Zero tone mapping, and this feels like a grey transparent overlay has hit the entire image without real difference in colors (between the blacks being black, and the whites really being white)

Tone Mapped

Here we have a fully tone mapped Black and white image with actual interest. Note the light filtering through the bushes in the foreground.

Now we are really cooking with something serious. I know that there are no silver bullets that will fix all ills, and there is no piece of software that has the magic bullet to make great artwork. This will be a slow process, but my hope is that each step brings me closer to the vision I have in my head showing up on the screen in front of you. This step has me very excited to see the progress so far.