Changing Photos From Color To Black and White

October 02, 2012

Can you improve a photo by changing it from color to black and white? That will depend on your point of view and if you have the means to make such changes. Some pictures will not turn out well, no matter what you do to them. However, I believe that there are ways pictures can be improved with a certain amount of editing.

Let’s take a look at the picture on top of this blog:

The Good: There can be little question what the prominent focus of this picture is. It is the dog, who is captured very well in the photo. He is up front and perfectly posed (At least I think so).

The Bad: The colors of the sky and mountains in the background are way too bright and distracting (in my opinion). This takes away from what would otherwise be a great picture of a Labrador retriever.

I used some photo editing software to do a straight black and white conversion, and you can see the result below.

Does this look better? The distracting bright green of the mountains is gone, but it still appears to be too bright overall. So, I tried to tinker with it some more. I reduced the brightness setting and the result is what you see below.

In this picture, the sky does not appear to be as "washed-out" as it did in previous shots. The details of certain elements of this picture are more prevalent than they were before. However, other elements have been made darker.

Is this an improvement? Or was the picture better off unedited? I think the second revision is an improvement. It removes the distracting brightness, while preserving the presence of the central subject. However, I welcome your thoughts on this, so feel free to share them.

The one thing I do want you to take away from reading this blog is that you can change your pictures after you take them. Sometimes, they will be improved. Sometimes, they won’t.

Check out our catalog for more information on editing photos and black and white photography.

Robert F
Excelsior Springs Branch