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Black and White

Lesson 18 from: Dramatic Post-Production

David Nightingale

Black and White

Lesson 18 from: Dramatic Post-Production

David Nightingale

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Lesson Info

18. Black and White

Next Lesson: Audience Q&A

Lesson Info

Black and White

black and white conversion techniques. Rights? No, I spreadsheets. Sorry, it's not a flow chart this time. It's a nice table. And what we've got here is a grid off four ways off. Converting into just black and white destructive nondestructive on no control versus control. Okay, so what do I mean by this? If you look at those techniques, what's what I mean by destructive and nondestructive, whether it's reversible or not? Yeah, yeah, in essence, whether or not the change is reversible so a destructive technique if we jump back in new. So let's we say the same thing. So let's let's flatten down for second here. We've got the background, its emergence in color. If I went image on adjustments on de Saturate, which is down there, yeah, we got a black and white image, but that is the background loner we've taken just physically taking the color out of that letter. So that's kind of a technique that offers us is destructive, and it's no control, image mode, image adjustments, the century, and...

I've got no curse what I'm doing. This, which is hunting for Kirsten ever. It's not appear so kind of. We don't want to be doing destructive changes that would be image mode, grayscale image adjustments, de saturate our image adjustments, saturation and dragging saturation slider down. Kind of we want to make. The whole point of what we're doing this weekend is taking control of these various processes, so no control is not good. So there's a couple of non destructive no control techniques that we're not gonna look at either, because really, they're just not very interesting. Let's switch back a second. Um, got there in the end. There we go. Okay, let's do that. So we could have an adjustment land on. We could use the hue saturation tall on again. We could just kind of supper color at the image, but this gives us no control at all. All we're doing is kind of averaging else these RGB values to create a black and white image on Sometimes it's okay. Sometimes it works, but we haven't done anything. We have no control over the process. Yeah. Okay, Rod, a switch to another image than on if you go back to the file. So again, if you've if you've paid for the course, you've got these files on you guys have any computer. Let's go to eso. It's three high from black and white, one conversion techniques on Let's take a look at conversion one dot psd. That's one of my favorite structures. Is partner will appear on Santana's in northwest coast of England on. Probably shot this last time before I have shots was probably a bank. Okay, so when we're converting this to black and white, what would be good to have some control over tones contra of what? Between the black and white? Yes, on the basis of what, On the basis of the color of the image. Right. Okay, So if we just used hue saturation tool for this image, that's what we get. So any of these destructive techniques were talking about the image to gray scale. This is This is roughly what you get you get. You get color sucked out. The image on it is kind of OK, it's a reason shots. No, it doesn't look too bad, but it's not a special exciting What would make this little better? What would we like more off in terms of co interest? More, uh, more separation of darks and lights. And this guy? Yes, I can't. Right. How many of you used to shoot film? I'm black and white film. Did you shoot filters? Yeah, right. What filters would you use and why? Because a red 42. Right? And what did it do? It increased contrast in the blues. Right wine? What's the physics of that? Why does that work? What I'm ready to do physically. To the opposite of blue. That way it's not quite the opposite. But what is it? What is it? What goes through It makes the so it would filter out of the blue to make it darker. Yes, yes. A red filter going like red light through it is gonna partially blocked the blue lines. Kind of look at the values here in the sky. It's not just blue. Look at these RGB values. It's 49 red 60 green, 119 blue. So it's more blue so we can somehow block some of this blue skies Gonna go dark right within weapon RGB images. Who's familiar with channels On what channels are I played with him? We call on Jim Johan without first. Yeah, sure. What? Channels are basically masks essentially that contain the data for the three different colors that you're dealing with, kind of, Yeah, I think you might be confusing. It's like to call them masks. But on when we look at you know, when we look at the info palette here, every single pixel in Simi, just three values to get a read value, agreeing value on a blue value. Now, if we switched the channels palette, I've got my next to last pallet. You'll see that what we get is get the RGB image at the top, and we get the Red Channel Green Channel in the Blue Channel. Now if your zone in color if you go to not general preference is the interface I've got show channels and color. Don't bother turning it on if it's black and white, because it's not really very use of what to do next. I just kind of wanted to show you those before we start, so we turn these off. We can look at the individual channels, so there's the Blue Channel data. There's the Green Channel data. There's the Red Channel, doctor. So when you learn these together, you end up with the arching be image, so you kind of these three channels that make up the composite image and you add them together. Okay, I want to do now is I'm gonna change the preferences on. Go back to this one on. I'm gonna turn off show channels and color. So what we now have is kind of a gray scale representation of each of these three channels. So we look at these individually, so that is the Red Channel. That's the Green Channel. There's the Blue Channel, which is the best night of those. Let's start the Blue Channel Is the Blue Channel worth looking at Is any good? No, it's actually worse, isn't it? It's worse than the hue saturation adjustment. And why is that? That's what? Because what we don't as yet. We've emphasized the blue data here, so the sky becomes brighter on kind of the reds on the browns and foreground become darker. Green channel. It's a whole lot better on, but personally, I prefer the Red Channel. So the Red Channel there's kind of less blue in the red channels and skies got darker. There's more red, so the sand has gone lighter. Just jumped back the Blue Channel kind of that you see with San in here in the bottom right hand corner, that's quite muddy. Switch the Red Channel. Its a lot brighter more importantly, the structure of brighter and more interest in this guy. So there's a kind of the three channels. So the reason for showing you, though, is one of the first things I want to show you here to use the channel mixer to convert finished black and white. Okay, we can use the channel mixer to Ulta Color Lieutenant on fear, so we can fiddle around with the sliders and we'll change the color balance. What the Channel mixer does is it does what it says on the tin. It mixes the channels. But we can also use it to convert me Mr Black and White by clicking the monochrome. But new what you saw there? If I turn it off again on going back to the default settings, it starts. Sounds, ah 100 00 for red, green and blue and switch between different channels. So at this stage we're using for the Red Channel were using the Red Channel, So 100% here for the Red Channel No green, no blue After the Green Channel. It's all the green channel red, blue. So for color image kind of mix and blend these channels together when we go to monochrome, What we're doing is we're using these three channels in different proportions. Okay, At the moment, the default setting is 40 red 40 green on 20 blue. Now, if we stick this on your filters, you'll see at the top here. If I If I click where it says custom name, you'll see we got a range of filters we can choose. So I choose the blue filter. What you see is it jumps to 100 for blue, zero for green, zero for red On this this is the Blue Channel. So we just looked at the Blue Channel. This looks exactly the same because we've got 100% of Blue Channel, nothing from the Red Channel and nothing from the Green Channel. We jumped to the red filter. It's now 100% the Red Channel, no percent Green Channel on no percent blue. So this is kind of hand channel mix of works. It bases. The black and white conversion on the data in specific journals have used filters. There but equally while I can kind of drag these slides around as well. No. One thing you'll notice is that there is a total comes up here. So I reset that back to you. near near enough. You get kind of total. And then the males, once you go above 100 you kind of get warning symbol pops up. Now, the reason for that is no. What's up? This diagram? No, we're not 120 with red. What? We don't with Instagram, we've started. We started to clip the Blue Channel or or something. What's this? Graham telling us this is a black and white image at this stage. So we're gonna spike on the right hand inch. What? We clipped hell. It highlights what we've lost in highlight detail on The reason for that is we're bite. It's no getting too bright. Got aggressive with their We've gone above the value of 100 to the point where have introduced clipping. Now the 100 is kind of a warning. If we come back down, you'll see that we can't go a little bit about. So get 106 and we don't get clipping It's just kind of something worth worth keeping your eye on because you can. With the Channel Mixer, you can completely, you know, Blowen image buying using too high volumes. Let's go back to the red filter. So we got condition up a little bit. And if we compare that to the hue saturation led, there's the hue saturation adjustments. Now one thing. We're going through black and white things that certainly explain what's happening with these layer these adjustment layers. Here, we've got two black and white conversions. We got a hue saturation. We've got the Channel mixer. So why is it when I turn on the hue saturation adjustments channel next has no effect. Lots of framing. Right? Okay, this goes back to the point way didn't spend a great deal of time on this, that this is a stack of adjustment layers that operates on top of each other. So what you have is the background lair, which is then converted to black and white, using the hue saturation that that's the next one up in the last stack. So I got a black and white image at this stage so the channel mixer doesn't make a slight difference because we went up to 100 nights. Let's just reset that Teoh, right? Okay, reset 200. So why is it having no effect? It's having no effect because it's trying to convert me Mr Black and White, the images already black and white because we did so with the hue saturation adjustments. If I turn the hue saturation adjustments are off. It has no effect is now inactive. So it's near. The channel mixer is doing the black and white conversion. So this is this is kind of handy. You can kind of compare things very easily here by stacking these up. So when the hue saturation just glad that does the black and White Conversion Channel mixer will have no effect is already black and white. You can't have a black and white image to black and white. Makes no sense. Um, and if I turn it off, I can compare it with the channel mixer. So, you know, it's kind of a big improvement. Yeah, invert the top to put the child mixer before the hue saturation. I certainly could on then what it would do is the hue saturation would be I contract that down, so they're channel mixes active. And if I turn that off, the hue saturation becomes active. So just keep you just need to keep in mind that this stack of less on a lad it's lower down will have its effect before let's above it. Eso you know, kind of. If we look at the channels at this point, uh, it's turning was off the role. Identical. We've done the black want conversions. It's still in RGB image, but the values in the same free channel kind of makes sense. You friend in that kind of makes sense. I was just trying to read this ah question from Kallithea and see if it was appropriate. Didn't see if it's appropriate. What's the advantage of using the Channel mixer to convert to black and white with just rgb sliders over using the black and white adjustment layer with RG bcm y sliders? On a good question on. Historically, I've used the Channel mixer because it was there before the black and white appeared. I'm invariably you country achieve as you'll see in a minute you can achieve very similar results with the black and white. One of the reasons for introducing Channel Mixer is because that's what you have within our GBM if you have these three channels. So we know what to think about the structure of the image, which is kind of these three values in terms off mixing those channels together I think kind of gives you an insight into kind of what's going on behind the scenes in photo shop. Your third shot does it in number crunches. It's not really converted into black and white. It's just taking an input value and it's got value. That's what you had with curve the black and white tulips the same. It is normalizing all three channels, just kind of a useful way of thinking out what's going on with this data that you've got. I still news Channel Mixer. I think you get nice results with sometimes, but you can get almost identical results with black and white talk. So probably there's not a great deal of merit and using the Channel Mixer, but it's kind of a good wave of bringing in the topic that makes sense to you guys. Yes, okay, right, let's switch to a second image. Ah, it's very quickly. There's one of my daughters again looking a little bit flow I would be would be for a walk on and she was the pick me up and carry me stage. Understand? They will take a picture will pick you up. So she's looking a bit miserable again. If we look at the hue, saturation adjustments, you know, it's kind is kind of OK doesn't look too bad, But let's start thinking about what we might like to do with what we would like to emphasize what we would like to deal for size. Okay, so what we've got is we got a range of different tones. We've got kind of green, the yellows in the background. We've got some reds in the foreground on. We kind of got some bluey graze at the bottom. So if you have a look at the Channel Mixer, um, let's use this to commit to monochrome. So if we use a red filter working just kind of bright skin tones. But we're all that darkness down genes, quite a lot, and it makes the background quite bright. So for me, you know hue Saturation produces a slightly more balanced image channel mix. It looks very bright top, very dark on the bottom. It's not quite bring out detail, so that's with a red filter. Extra green filter. You know, that Kind of look too good. I know. She is now looking a bit dark backgrounds looking a bit bright. If we switch to a blue filter, it's kind of darkness down the background makes us done. Now what? I'm going through this one quite quickly. So I do want to go into the black and whites or which we're gonna answer that question. But as I mentioned, you can kind of juggle these slides around a little bit. So for me, a good results. Waas plus 20 red minus 30 green plus 1 10 blue. Now, what was that Donald needed? Just turn it off again. So we're gonna add a little bit of red. It's gonna kind of bright on the red tones, so that's kind of gonna brighten. Skin turns a little bit mostly towards the blue channel. Oh, that's gonna brighten down the lower section here, minus 30 on the green. It's going dark down this background. So, county, when you turn the all yeah, she stands out about the backgrounds darker was a bit more like the bottom. So if you go to the hue saturation No, that's quite flattened. Comparisons. Yeah. So the channel mixer is it when you can use probably most of you when we go through black and white will think that black and white tiles easier on It certainly gives you a little bit more scope. So let's switch to the black and white. So Okay, this is a shot off a guy shooting with I like to get people calling about the ground carbon really shooting. Now, I think some sort of can. Certainly something on the beach. Um, you saturation adjustment really is quite. Blend here. So let's have a think about the shot. What do we want to emphasize in this image? What we're gonna want to bring in, in case you're wondering about the depth of field, it's slightly artificial, increased the apparent shallowness of the depth of field. So kind of all we've got in focus now is the bottom of his shoe. For me, this was kind of the key, but the shop So how we're gonna bring the arms working Red channel. Well, this is the image I use less new saturation. Here's the channel mixer. If we look at the uh huh, get into the right menu. If we look at the red filter, it kind of hinds it in the Senate because the sand in the shoe of both quite red on against the green filter, it looks a little bit better on if you go to the blue filter. The shoe gets darker, but the sun goes a bit Mahdi and we lose the detail of sky. Several reason for use in this example is in this case, the Channel Mixer isn't overly useful. It's what we look at now is the black and white. So to create a black mark just nights exactly the same as any adjustment you do from here on pick black and white. Or you could go there, uh, new adjustment layer black and white. Okay, so what's immediately different with black and white? It's just it's an adjustment layer compared to the channel. Next, what did we have control over with General? Except twice as many adjustments. This twice as many adjustments here now. So in addition to being able to buy basic on red, green and blue, we still got red, green and blue. But we also have yellow, cyan and magenta. So we've got the primary colors in the secondary colors. Right. So let's take a look at how we could do this to activate this in there. This is this is the default setting these air coming in numbers here. What you'll notice new, though, is if I move this red slider when we were switching channels with the channel mixer on descend in the shoe were kind of covered by the Red Channel, pretty much so. They would both change. Yeah. What this does know, because we split the reds from the yellows, is we've got kind of precise control over the bottom of this fort. The yellows now control the sand. They have a little bit effectively shoe. But not so much sand brighter on. We could make a shoe darker greens. What effects greens have? It's got a little bit a little tiny bit about this guy that was a little bit greedy in there. Science is the sky on blues. The sky on the magenta is gonna have a little bit of an effect on absolutely nothing. So I wish it started that sentence that way. But there you go, Right? One thing here is the numbers. So we were talking about Music Channel Mixer. You kind of need to balance the mayor on end up with a number that's roomed about 100 with a black and white till the numbers irrelevant. You do need to keep an eye on Instagram if I push the Reds all the way up. You see now I introduced him flipping in the highlights, but the actual total. It's totally irrelevant now. One reason for that is, and if I moved in magenta slider around, I go to plus 300 I got to minus 200. It's having no effect on the image whatsoever, so the values of kind of irrelevant. So the black and white tool is kind of a handy wrong because it gives you a lot more control over these individual color ranges. No, if we were looking at a raw file, so we kind of mentioned this yesterday. Let's go toe raw file and you'll see if you remember we were talking about the actual sound grayscale town. I'm kind of picking up speed a little bit extra lunchtime, and I kind of want to just get one is in your hand. You come back to this strike after lunch as well. David, could I slip in a question? You send a camp. Great. Thanks. Deep pickles would like to know. Would you ever use multiple channel mixer layers with masks to affect local areas in the black and white conversion? Very quickly. Let me show you. We're probably coming into this after lunch, but let's let me show you why you might want to do that on a this image here. For example, if we do anything saturation kind of the century, it's it. What I did with this image is what? Well, I'm just very quickly works of the changes I made. How status stirred Channel Nixon, right? What I end up with, if I go, I'll use the red filter. I could've done this with a black white filter. I get kind of a flat image. What I want to do is draw attention to a specific written image. Is there underneath that channel mixer? Lair cracked another one. What I'm gonna do this time is biased towards the Blue Channel. They see how that changes. Does the image. So there's lots of blue over here are biased towards blue. The blue bits become like on this. This face over here almost completely disappears. If I bite it towards red, I kind of flatten everything off. Now when they did this image, what I did waas the following. So let's block off that adjustment there. What I wanted to do was draw attention to some specific bits of the image. In particular, there's something there hopes. Let's just do it. Nice, that one. And here. So yes is the answer to that question where I didn't want wills. That fact I didn't want the face of being very bright. I didn't really like the detail kind of long a sickle here on, but I didn't want it all flat. So by using layers and masks, I could brighten up that section. There's no curves involved at this stage. It's just different black and white conversion techniques to kind of pick out the detail exactly. You could kind of do the same when his nose as well, if you want t o on the front of his head on, it's kind of paint in different effects. So, yes, you can stack up black and white conversion techniques on again. You know this to there? You could have a Zeman AEA's you liked in the end. Nothing going up a three for this image, but yeah, hopefully that answers the question. Yeah, let's close that one down on go back to the raw file on. The only reason I'm showing his role file is because it gives you even more control than looking like. So the xsl with great skills have It's this one. Looks like a kind of spring is the 4th 1 in. And here now, convert to grayscale. Um, so we have three things with channel mixing red, green, blue. We have a prime in second because with black and white. So no, we have a couple of extra ones as well, which is kind of the oranges on purpose. So if you look at this image name, uh, control the reds just turn it off like a image first. Groups greeting red stop sign kind of blew down here with slaughter blue on kind of the grass on the gateway here. Kind of Hillary green so I can make the reds a lot darker. Ah, that lightens up a little bit. The bottom of the reds yellows will bring up the middle. Uh, I bring up guys, the blues are gonna affect the grams. Bring those days back was gonna do the same kind of what you can see. Kind of building up in the things based upon the colors in the original image. Typically, even though this is the most powerful technique, I wouldn't use camera raw to convert image to black and white. On most of my black and white images are color images that went wrong. So I start processing nearly always start processing in color on and I was switched to black and white If if the color is a distraction so you know, if you turn it one of the strengths of black and white is that subject really comes out? No. You know someone carrying a bright blue bank on you convert to black and white. It's gonna be less significant. Control terrible events through the bag and soul so typically hours starting color and then switched to black and white lights so I wouldn't be converting clucking like That's why I used neither channel mixer because I'm used to using it or I'll be using a black and white till when I remember that black white sold, Actually a little bit more flexible. It's that kind of makes sense. Okay, So what can select today? Onda? We got about five minutes before lunch, so let's have a look. Overnight conversion for Pierce d Have a look at her. You would convert black and whites. So let's take a look at the options that we've got what you're gonna want to draw attention to. So there's a default. What? What do we want to emphasize? What do we want to bring in? What choices? Stop. The stop sign is kind of the key. The key part here. So we've got some red what we do with this Red? Well, we've got two choices. We can either make it very dark or we could make it a lot lighter. Yeah, on his own. That's not especially effective. So let's look at the rest of the image. First. We kind of got the yellows which bring this bitch down here. So one thing we could do is make the kind of the gating very dark on. We could make a stop sign quite bright, making stand that the alternative is to take this phone Damn on, take the gate up. Kind of You've got a lot of scope when it comes to black and white conversion To think about how you're gonna bring out detail shots after lunch, we'll quickly look a portrait because this kind of especially significant things when it comes to black white portraiture, I'm with 10 being. These are techniques. This is a technique that you can really think about. What is it in this image that I want to convert? You know, how do I want to convert black and white? What do I want to draw attention to? And in a way, you're doing exactly the same things we're doing this morning with layers of masks. You're picking out section of the image and you're changing its brightness and its contrast not so much the contrast with still, but certainly the brightness. But you're doing it this time on the basis of color, not on the basis of masking

Class Materials

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Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Ive been following davids work and tutorials for around a year now...well ever since i took up photography as a hobby. Im a lifetime member to chromasia.com and have been working through his tutorials when time allows. There is no fast track approach to this subject but i wanted the best advice i could get. Ive always found david very approachable over the internet and is always willing to offer advice on questions ive had regarding all manner of photography questions, being a noob. Whilst the tutorials are very comprehensive and well written sometimes its hard to digest this by yourself. So when i heard that he was presenting a three day course over the net. I jumped (well not quite more like sat down) at the chance to make sure i was able to watch the course (didnt manage that either). Sometimes its better to have a monkey see monkey do approach to walk you through different aspects of photoshop. And after the first day of the tutorial, so much information sunk in more so than it did sat reading through the tutorials. Although i didnt get to actively sit and watch the remainder of the last two days i did purchase the course so i can refer back to it time and time again. I can highly recommend this course, its concise, well planned and enjoyable course to watch. When you subcribe to the course you even get the files david walked through so you can practice yourself. I cant really praise the whole package enough...but its an invaluable reference course and couple this with chromasia membership you have a package that will dramatically improve your processed photos, the way you think about composition and importantly your camera settings! Great stuff

a Creativelive Student
 

David’s Dramatic Post Production Workshop is an excellent source of both education and inspiration. The Photoshop instruction is excellent and was my primary reason for watching the workshop. I was very surprised by how thought provoking the shooting sessions in the alley were and the lasting influence it will have on my own photography. Firstly the preparation for the session in the alley was interesting – having a goal and a purpose in mind. The fact that they are producing interesting work to illustrate the points and techniques in a rather dull alley helps emphasize the learning. On my next shoot after watching the workshop I definitely made adjustments in my approach. The discussion, examples and instruction on the goal of making an image more dramatic is very inspiring. It really makes me step back and review my own work to see how I can approach it from a different perspective

a Creativelive Student
 

The workshop was a great opportunity to learn to be more purposeful and intentional about the creative process at the post-production stage. I found the second day of the workshop – where David goes into his own approach in Photoshop – to be the most valuable for me. I look forward to putting this new found wisdom into practice into my own work. Thanks David!

Student Work

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