Black and white skills

Coran Gleed

Today 2/5/13 we had a lecture with Tobie on digital black and white technique, first of all |I found out that there are many ways to NOT create black and white images such as the de-saturation which I never used any way but the one that I did use which was the image-adjustments-black and white was also a amateur process  the correct pro way to go about this image is first to prefect the image in colour  using the RAW software then once opened in photoshop create a new layer call it black and white - edit-fill-50% grey- blending mode-colour-background layer- new adjustment layer- selective colour this allows you to use the sliders to create a much better b/w image and also does no damage such as pixelation to the original image and gives you a better control over the tones and depth un-like the other ways that either damage your image or leave it looking flat.

I learned to create a vignette on photoshop as well which will tie in nicely with my final peaces which could be done in black and white, to create this effect first I used a elliptical marque tool to make a elliptical circle almost the hole size of the image just a little off the boarder after this I had to invert the selected circle to select the outside of the circle instead of the inside- select-modify-feather-by 250pxls (the max) use the paint bucket to fill the selected boarder with pure black- fill selected area-deselect- and control the effect to your preference with the layers opacity slider.

To dodge and burn using this pro black and white technique I have to create a new layer-blend mode- soft light- layer opacity 50%- paint brush opacity 40-60%- hardness 0% and use the black to burn in and white to dodge.

Film grain Effect new layer- Edit- fill-50% grey- filter-noise- Gaussian- tick monochromatic- blending mode- overlay- opacity to your requirement.