Some scenes are just made for color. Sunsets and sunrises, for example. While we have seen nice black and white or monochrome renditions, we generally know how vibrant and rich the colors are of these events, and we find the richness very pleasing. You can say the same for many other scenes, but there are also times when a black and white version conveys an entirely different, and at least equally rich, impression.

How do you know when a scene will work well in black and white (for our purposes, we’ll include monochrome, as well)? The accompanying image is of a section of Crabtree Falls, near the Blue Ridge Parkway. We plan to visit Crabtree Falls during our photography workshop in August, and we will also be discussing processing for both color and black and white.

There are two different approaches, and both work well. First, learn to “see in black and white”. This is not as difficult as it may seem. But get used to envisioning how a scene will look without the colors. Keep in mind that the tonal ranges of colors can overlap, which may mean that, in black and white, different colors may look very similar. For example, red flowers in a field of green may look like nothing but a solid gray field. You can sometimes create contrast by lightening either the greens or the reds (but not both!), so it can still work in B&W.

]

One trick that helps with this method is to set the screen on the camera back to display only black and white. If you shoot RAW, the raw image still retains the color data, but the jpg preview is rendered in black and white. Now you can preview the B&W image to help yourself learn to see in black and white.

The second approach is to simply try some of the images in B&W in post processing. One of the great things about using good processing software, such as Lightroom or Photoshop, as well as others, is that you can change the image to B&W, make other adjustments, and you do not necessarily alter the original image. In Lightroom the original remains unchanged, and you can go back to it, even though your conversion to B&W and related changes are also saved. In Photoshop you can make non-destructive changes until you go to save the image. If you save it, you need to “Save As” to create a new file, so the original will not be overwritten.

Some will also observe that there is an exception to the Photoshop saving - if you use both Lightroom and Photoshop, and use the “Edit in Photoshop” feature of Lightroom, when the image is saved in Photoshop it saves as a new file (either a TIF file or a PSD file, depending on your settings), and doesn’t alter your original RAW file.