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Black and white photography has been around for as long as the camera itself, but even as it approaches its 200th birthday, it remains a central skill to any half-decent photo editor – and a frustratingly difficult one to pull off effectively. Part of the problem is its simplicity: in Photoshop, simply hit the ‘Monochrome’ button and the job’s done, right?

As ever, getting truly striking results is more complicated. Even film-based black and white photography requires coloured filters to tailor your results. Processing images digitally calls for just as much care, although the results are easier to control thanks to instant feedback.

Black and white processing doesn’t reward a one-size-fits-all approach. If you want to start turning out masterpieces, your black and white photography needs to start before you press your camera’s shutter button. While there will definitely be times when you stumble across images that simply work well in black and white, for reliable results you need to think about how you’ll process your image before you’ve taken it.

Choosing your shot

We’ll start with the good news: if you’ve found a colour image that lacks impact – perhaps because it was taken on an overcast day – converting it to black and white could save it from the recycle bin. You still need to choose carefully though. The colours in your image might not be striking, but it’ll help if you can find something with lots of contrast – big areas of white mixed with dark areas work well.

Your composition also needs to be clean. A cluttered frame might work in colour because the eye might be able to make sense of messy tangles if they’re made distinct by different hues, but once everything’s in shades of grey, people will have to work harder to discern details. People will skip over your photos if they have to work to decipher them.

An image like this is a great candidate for black and white conversion. It’s well composed, with good contrast and lots of striking textures.

It’s not just about contrast – composition also takes on a new importance. Landscapes can work incredibly well in black and white, particularly ones with clear delineations between sky and land like mountains. Try a few decent landscapes and the importance of contrast and composition will become clear.

Portraits are a different matter, because using lots of contrast can make people look strange. Instead, try to choose shots with clean lighting – a good excuse to develop some experience with an off-camera flash.

What you’ll need

Processing images into black and white is a crucial skill for most photographers, so it follows that every photo editor offers black and white processing. However, one-click black and white processing should ring alarm bells; processing that works for one image won’t always work for another, so fully-featured editing applications are normally the way to go. There are exceptions though – Picasa offers reasonably sophisticated fire-and-forget black and white tools.

If you’re a user of Photoshop Elements, you’re off to a good start – you don’t need the expensive full version of Photoshop to be able to produce effective results. Alternatively, all the tools you need are provided free in GIMP.

All photo editing software shares the same terminology, so piecing together the walkthrough below should be simple enough whichever tool you choose.

You don’t need much to put together a good looking image, but it’s worth considering your monitor before you start. The image you use needs to be well balanced in terms of exposure, so you need to make sure your screen is set up correctly. Consult Windows’ integrated calibration assistant to head down the right track – you’ll find it in the Control Panel under the ‘Display’ icon.

Creating black and white images takes a while compared to most effects – once you’ve got the basics down, there will always be a certain amount of tweaking sliders to get the perfect image.

Before you start, make sure you’re working with a good photo. While black and white conversions can absolve you of certain sins, like a small amount of motion blur, you’ll get the best results with solid images. Try to make sure your image is sharp, well focused and adjusted for perfect exposure before you start.

This shot works well in colour or in black and white, and is a great argument for shooting in colour and deciding on processing later.

It’s best to work with files that are uncompressed – that is, not JPEGs. Continually saving JPEG files will gradually reduce the quality of the image, so it’s better to work with a format like TIFF (or Photoshop’s native PSD format), which you can save as frequently as you like without losing image quality. Only save to JPEG once you’re finished editing.

How it works

It seems rather counter-intuitive that converting your images to black and white requires you to work with the red, green and blue colour channels, but black and white photography has always called for a knowledge of colour. In the days of film, colour filters were used to change the amount of different colours hitting the film. For instance, a red filter allows red light through, while absorbing green and blue. As a result, on black and white film, red hues appear white.

Since we now shoot exclusively in colour, the coloured filters you used to screw to your lens are more or less obsolete. You can get the same effect with more control by using the channel mixer in your editing software. By moving the sliders, you change how much of each colour is present in your image. In GIMP, these values are measured as percentages: a red value of 100 per cent gives a similar effect to using a red filter with black and white film.

If you have an image with a lot of blue sky and you use a blue filter, the resulting sky will be very bright.

One benefit of using channel sliders instead of colour filters is that you can mix and match, using different percentages of red and green, for instance. Remember that to keep your original image’s brightness, the final values need to add up to 100. Anything less and you’ll get a muddy result; any more and it’ll be too bright.

Create monochrome photos

Learn advanced techniques to ensure your black and white shots look their best

1 Adjust exposure

It’s best to work with images that are well exposed out of the camera, but if you need to make adjustments, do so f rst. Once your image is ready, it’s time to get to grips with the Channel menu. This image is a good choice for mono conversion, with strong composition and decent contrast meaning it doesn’t depend on colour.

2 Channel mixer

If you’re using GIMP, go to ‘Colours | Components | Channel mixer’. In Photoshop Elements, the channel mixer is located under ‘Enhance | Convert to black and white’. You can’t see the values you’ve chosen in Photoshop Elements, but the principals are the same. In GIMP, changes are shown in the preview box at the top of the mixer dialog.

3 Shades of grey

Now click the ‘Monochrome’ checkbox under the colour sliders to produce a black and white image. By default, the red channel is set to 100 per cent, which produces a bold image here. There’s plenty of detail in the clouds and the craggy rocks in the middle of the frame. If you’re happy with the preview, hit ‘OK’ to apply your changes.

4 Add contrast

It’s still possible to add contrast if you want your image to stand out more. Go to ‘Colours | Curves’ and drag the points on the diagonal line to create a slight ‘S’ shape. Don’t overdo it – what looks dramatic on screen might look terrible in print. Beware of posterisation, where smooth gradients turn into chunky blocks.

5 Film grain

If you’re really trying to evoke the age of black and white photography, try adding a touch of f lm grain. There are several ways to do this. In GIMP, go to ‘Filters, Noise, HSV Noise’. The HSV stands for ‘Hue, Saturation, Value’, and lets you overlay grain on your image, making it make look more textured. This is sometimes useful on low-ISO images.

6 Less is more

If the grain you’ve introduced to your image is noticeable when you zoom out (press [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[E] to fit the image on screen), you’ve added too much. It’s easy to overdo noise, so don’t forget this effect is supposed to be subtle. The slider to pay attention to in the HSV dialog is ‘Value’ at the bottom; try to keep the number below 60.

This feature is taken from PC Plus Issue 314 – on sale now. To view the expanded feature, as well as more fantastic articles, tutorials and reviews, click here to buy the digital version of PC Plus issue 314 now. You can also subscribe to PC Plus or buy PC Plus Magazine back issues.