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Black & White Printing

Lesson 27 from: Photographing Panoramas for Large Prints

Mike Hagen

Black & White Printing

Lesson 27 from: Photographing Panoramas for Large Prints

Mike Hagen

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Lesson Info

27. Black & White Printing

Editing and printing for black and white is an entirely different ballgame from color. Learn how to edit a black and white panorama in Lightroom, followed by, of course, printing.

Lesson Info

Black & White Printing

So the next thing is I wanna talk about black and whites real quick, give you a quick preview on black and whites, and what you might have to think slightly differently about with black and whites so we'll go back to Lightroom for that, and hopefully it doesn't crash the system but if it does, we're just gonna talk about prints earlier. Okay so we're gonna go back to one of my favorite photos of the day. I think they're all my favorites. You kinda get attached to these photographs like I love that one, I love that one. There we go. So this is the print that we made at the end of the last segment, the black and white. I really like this shot and this shot was just made for black and white, and the reason why is because it has these really beautiful clouds, these big white, puffy clouds, and it has a lot of blue in the sky. I love blue skies because in the black and white world, I can use my selective color adjustment tools in black and white to make that area, the areas of blue, dark, a...

nd Ansel Adams did this a lot in his prints. If you look at a lot of Ansel Adams landscape prints, his skies are dark, almost black sometimes. I love that look so let me show you how to create that look in Lightroom. There are a lot of plugins that will do it for you as well, but we're all about Lightroom today so here we go. First thing that you're gonna do when you do your black and white print is you're gonna convert it to black and white, and one of the fastest ways to do that is to type the letter V on your keyboard. Obviously V stands for vlack and vhite - vvv (chuckles). I don't know, was that French, Italian, I have no idea - black and white. Alright, the other way to do it is up here in the Basic panel. You can actually on the Black and White slider, or the Black and White button there and it converts it. So you can go from color to black and white there. Alright, so all the things you normally do, you do here. Highlights down, you know push the detail back in the clouds, Shadows up if you need to get some detail back out of those, out of that industrial scene, and all of that's good. I know I said earlier that I don't use Contrast but sometimes I do a little bit of Contrast in my black and whites, and that just adds a little bit of oomph to the photo. Here I'm doing plus six; great. Clarity will do mid-tone contrast. As I move Clarity down you see the image kinda get soft, so if I move clarity up, ooo, ooo I like that. Those clouds are starting to look sinister, heavy, great I like it. So I've got Contrast, I'm sorry Clarity up at plus 24. Okay and now we move down to my favorite tool in all of Lightroom for black and white conversion, it's down here, it's in the B and W segment. It's actually HSL, Color, and B and W. The neat thing about this it allows you to adjust the colors, but output them as black and white. So I mentioned that I want the sky to be black so what I can do here is I can move here to the blue area, and I move my blue sliders down, and you see that sky starts to look really dramatic and incredible. So if you know the color you're after, you just move the slider but sometimes we don't know the color we're after, and that's where this little tool comes in. It's called the TAT, the Targeted Adjustment Tool. So I'm gonna click on that and then I bring my mouse out here to where I know it was blue. I click down with my mouse, click, and then I drag down, and you see, you can't see the mouse in the screen here, but you see the sky is actually getting darker as I drag my mouse down. So if I move my mouse up, the sky gets brighter, and then while I'm doing this if you look at the the tool on the right hand side of the screen on the monitor, you'll see it's mostly adjusting blue, but it's also adjusting a little bit of the aquas. So sometimes this actually does a better job of making your sky dark. Great. Now the next thing I sometimes do, sometimes I like a little bit of a infrared look, and infrared turns green stuff bright white. So I can go down to where I know it was green with my Targeted Adjustment Tool, click there, and drag up. So you can really modify the overall look and feel of your photo by using the Targeted Adjustment Tool. Wonderful for black and whites. So I don't know, it's six one, half dozen in the other. You like it brighter, you like it darker, what do you guys think? Bright. Brighter? Okay done. Darker, not done. (audience laughs) Rebel, okay (chuckles), there we go. So now I'm done with the Targeted Adjustment Tool and I'm gonna do before and after so I click my back-splash button on my keyboard, that's above my Return button, there's the color, and there's the black and white. Ooo I like it, it looks great, and now when I go to print there's one more thing that ya'll all need to know, you have to click that little box that says Black and White. So let's do that. So I go Print, I go here to Page Setup, make sure all that's good and it is. I click Print Settings, and this is the important one, right there. So why would we click Black and White here? Well it actually tells the printer to just use inks that pertain to black and white. Really helps the image pop, gives you the nice deep, rich blacks, and the medium grays, and the bright whites. So, so that's printing in black and white.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Panorama Checklist & Gearlist

Ratings and Reviews

Fred Morton
 

Get it, get it and get it. I bought Mike's Speedlight course and this is on the list after watching it on line. The course design by Mike with the Creative Live staff is a successful blend of content and presentation. I absolutely loved how Mike took us on location for several shoots, where we could see the setup and problems that he had to resolve. This is a must have course for photographers interested in landscape work. Another powerful part of this class is Mike's willingness to demonstrate and show us what didn't work. The practical experience in his course was just like being in the field with Mike.

user a5f3c6
 

Mike combines two characteristics of a great teacher: he's obviously knowledgable and competent about his subject matter and he's relaxed and confident in how he presents his ideas. This class covers everything I need to know about photographing and printing panoramas. But, it is much more. It is a class that shows the essential skills involved in shooting, post-processing, and printing photographs and how to apply them to a specific application: panoramas. I learned a lot! Thanks, Mike.

Sue Sirius
 

This workshop was terrific! I learned so much about taking, processing and printing panoramas (and photos in general). I found the presentation very easy to follow with great examples and instructions. Highly recommend this!

Student Work

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