Time was when you had to decide before you took the picture. Now even if you intend to create a monochrome image with digital photography the place to start is a colour file. You may just find that colour works better after all. You may find that you want both colour and black and white. If you start by shooting everything in colour you have every possible option and you have more control over the final picture. If you convert the picture to monochrome instead of leaving it up to your camera, you get to decide on contrast, brightness, etc.

In Corel Photopaint, split the channels of RGB and just keep the red channel for an infrared look, you’ll get very light skin tones. Or convert to LAB and then split the channels, keep L – O for a more natural skin tone. That is how this black and white was created. In Adobe Photoshop, use convert to black and white. This allows you to adjust the amount of each colour individually, to gain optimal control of you final picture. You may want to punch the contrast up as a finishing touch, just make sure you have kept detail in the highlights and the shadows for whichever media you are going to use for the final presentation.

If you are ever having trouble controlling colour or tone, if you are having problems with white balance, whether in your camera, monitor or from your printer. Introduce a known quantity into the equation. Although this very useful Kodak card is no longer available there are other colour swatches and or gray cards.

I add this card to one of my pictures for any given photo setting and then when it comes to processing the raw files I simply sample the white balance from the gray scale. I can also use the lightest white and the darkest black to set my exposure and black point and even print it out to compare the final print result with the original. This is even more useful for digital photography than it was when I first started using it with film. A simple trick like this could save you hours of frustration.

It is always great to learn something new, but it is even better when you have the chance to teach other people and share your knowledge. The other night I presented a workshop at one of the local camera clubs. Good fun and rewarding, for me at least! I’m sure that some people picked up some new ideas or learnt a little more about what is possible with digital photography.