Black and White Photography - How to Use It Effectively

Black and white photography is something that is very popular amongst photographers and their clients. You can use black and white photography in many different ways, you can use it to create a “vintage feel” for your portraits or a very “classic modern feel as well”. There are also different types of coloring tones you can use, sepia, chocolate, blue, etc. Vintage and assorted overlays also look very nice on black and white photography and can completely turn the feel of a photo into something else in a few minutes.

Editing

To edit black and white photography properly a good way to do it is to edit the photo in color first. Then when you turn the photo to black and white (which can be done many different ways) use the “curves or levels” tool in Photoshop and play around with the contrast. You can go a little more harsh on the contrast with black and white photos. Also, I always sharpen the photos up as well. For some reason black and white photos look way better when they are sharper in my opinion.

One other tip I love to do is sharpen up the eyes even more than the rest of the photo, sometimes-using the “dodge” tool I will highlight them as well. The only thing that I really try to avoid when editing and turning a photo black and white, is the photo looking almost “grainy”. If you don’t take the photo properly in the first place it can start to look like it has “noise” on the photo. So make sure your have good lighting and that if you are a professional photographer using shadows that you experiment with different lighting setups before you have a client you are shooting.

Sepia.

Sepia is when you bring a brownish orange tone to the photo. I will make the photo completely black and white first and then add a sepia tone. This tends to give a slightly more vintage feel to the photos.

Blue.

I love adding a blue tone to some of black and white photos; I usually do this for high fashion portraits and very modern photos, not vintage ones.

Chocolate.

This is a very popular thing right now it seems for parents. Many families and parents I take photos of requests that they have this feel. It’s basically black and white photography with a rich dark brown tone on it.

Photo Overlays

I love photo overlays! If you are not familiar with them, you basically get a photo that has maybe some texture or interesting edges, and then put it on top of the photo you are working on and then use a “blending option” in Photoshop. I usually use “overlay or soft light” but even love “color burning” once in a while. I then create a mask over the photo and take it off of the person’s faces and skin (arms, legs, etc.)