In this dPS poll we want to know how many of your images you take or process as black and white images?
In comments below also tell us a little about the shots that do end up black and white and how you do it (ie do you take them Black and White in camera or process them?
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47 Responses to “What Percentage of your Images Do You Take or Process B&W? POLL” - Add Yours
October 25th, 2012 at 6:40 am
Sony’s “Rich-tone Mono.” is fun. Getting a lot of my attention.
October 25th, 2012 at 6:52 am
I think I’ve made 5 photos black and white out of the thousands I’ve taken, so I’m somewhere well below 1%, but greater than zero. I tend to really like black and white photos though, so I probably should try it more often.
October 25th, 2012 at 7:54 am
I really love b/w so when I shoot I shoot for the purpose to change them to b/w in photoshop.
October 25th, 2012 at 9:06 am
I love the nostalgia and feeling of black and white actually my last project I AM ART was entirely black and white including the website GUI
October 25th, 2012 at 9:41 am
I like to use B&W to add some points of interest for presentations. I shoot in color NEF 14 bit and process in PS CS-6 ext.
October 25th, 2012 at 10:30 am
Looks like about 15 out of the last 1,000 for me, I really like B&W but it comes as an afterthought for those photos that deserve it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lendog64/5185252796/
October 25th, 2012 at 10:37 am
I shoot everything as raw and use Adobe Photoshop and Nik Silver Efex PRO to convert to monochrome. Just about every shot can work when you know the software.
October 25th, 2012 at 10:45 am
I would say 5% or so but I think BW sets the mood for the shot below.
http://portraitinspiration.com/inspiration-for-the-day-32/
October 25th, 2012 at 10:59 am
I always shoot in colour and sometimes i think a particular image might look good in Black and White, so I usually do this as a post process.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/87306816@N02/sets/72157631674489208/
October 25th, 2012 at 11:16 am
I’d say at the most maybe 5% but I’m working on that. I’m trying to look at things in black and white and shoot for that purpose (on occasion).
Here’s a recent example:
http://jeffejensen.blogspot.com/2012/08/bonsai.html
October 25th, 2012 at 12:36 pm
When growing up B&W is all I shot. I continued to shoot B&W mostly until I got my digital camera. I still like B&W and am returning to shooting it. I am also partially color blind and it easier and better for me to shoot B&W.
October 25th, 2012 at 2:12 pm
I love b&w…..I see shots in b&w…my pics are b&w because I saw them that way through the viewfinder!
October 25th, 2012 at 2:46 pm
seldom to street photography or gain highly noise photos.. or facing WB problems… so… B&W .. almost 0..
October 25th, 2012 at 3:55 pm
I hardly do B&W. I hardly know post processing, I use only Picasa. I end up making a pic B&W in the end sometimes.
http://blogs.gonomad.com/traveltalesfromindia/
October 25th, 2012 at 7:35 pm
I rarely process my pics b&w, this is one of those:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nuspa/7204873924/
October 25th, 2012 at 10:45 pm
I shoot EVERYTHING Adobe RAW in color, and convert to a tif for further editing in CS5.0 with the idea of making a print..Once that is done, I study the image to envision whether or not it might have more “impact” in B&W. If I think it may, I duplicate the image, and go “Image-adjust-B&W”, and try the available presets..If one is close to my minds eye for a B&W, I will then tweak the sliders to my satisfaction..I then make a choice of which one to print..Sometimes I print BOTH! Sometimes COLOR IS the subject..sometimes it’s the FORM and TONES that become the subject, in which case I lean toward the B&W image..
Just my 2 cents!
October 25th, 2012 at 10:51 pm
I would say about 10% though I’ve been shooting less of B&W recently. I sometimes shoot in monochrome and sometimes convert colour to B&W in post processing.
You can see some of them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/aprna/sets/72157624022831005/
and my B&W/ Sepia food photography at http://www.flickr.com/photos/aprna/sets/72157630365161844/
October 25th, 2012 at 11:25 pm
“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls!” – Ted Grant
I don’t find it necessary to shoot in B&W; with Photoshop (and more recently, Lightroom) as part of my post-processing workflow, I can produce B&W at any time. I can’t always add color back IN to a B&W photo, though.
However, there is something to be said for composing a photo in B&W, which arguably takes a different skill-set than composing a color photo. It’s just not a skill-set I have sought to cultivate yet.
October 26th, 2012 at 1:33 am
Like others who have commented already, having the first choice above 0% running all the way up to 25% is going to skew your results. While I very occasionally process to B&W, I would say less than 1% of my images end up there.
October 26th, 2012 at 6:41 am
More like 1% most of which are published in B&W.
October 26th, 2012 at 7:01 am
In the poll I said 1 – 25%. This number is a percentage of the photos that process and is closer to 25%. There is a large percentage of the photos that I take that I never get around to actually processing. Some of these may get edited a few years later when I rediscover them. All of the photos that I process as B&W I also process in a color version. When I first started increasing the number of B&W photos I just looked at ones that I shot and decided to make them B&W. Now, I frequently look at a shot and decide ahead of time that it will be B&W. Sometimes they do not come out like I thought they might, but most often the ones that I see as B&W are ones that I really prefer that way over the color and they come out as good or better than I imagined.
October 26th, 2012 at 7:12 am
I convert all of mine pp’ing using PhotoShop and desaturation first, then other tools. I convert over 90% of my images to B&W, having been a B&W fan all my life.
October 26th, 2012 at 7:23 am
I have recently been going to St. Pete College for the Photography 1 course, wishing to expand my understanding of the field. So they start us out with B & W Film, shooting various subject genres, processing our own neg’s and Printing them in the darkroom. This is way more challenging than I expected. But I am learning a great deal.
I have yet to scan any of my negatives, so cannot share with you yet. but will soon.
Thanks,
Z-Eyes.
October 26th, 2012 at 7:24 am
I shot almost exclusively b&w until about 1986. I switched to digital in 2009 and seldom did b&w. I recently purchased a Canon 9500 mark II printer and love the b&w prints. I am in probably in the 1-2% range right now but that may change as I get more familiar with the new printer.
October 26th, 2012 at 7:37 am
The majority of the images I shoot are for clients and are overwhelmingly color. Of the self-generated projects, about 50% of the images get converted to black & white
October 26th, 2012 at 7:41 am
I tend to change any nice portrait shots I take to B & W. And give them to those photographed. Less than 5 per cent of my pics would be B & W. Sometimes if my pics are slightly blurred thay can still look good if changed to B & W.
October 26th, 2012 at 7:50 am
I think for me I shoot about 50% black and white. Before I started taking photos, I was a great admirer of Henry Silberman’s shots of NYC in black and white. It captured such a mood of the city that I thoroughly enjoyed. In b&w, I loved how you can simplify a photo that has a lot going on and put focus on something you noticed.
October 26th, 2012 at 8:09 am
I love BW so much that I would pretty much turn all of them into BW
October 26th, 2012 at 8:18 am
I love black and whilte and convert about 40 of my images. I agree with Peter above. B&W adds more soul. The photos below, for example, evoke much different emotions in B&W than it would in color.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/79824934@N08/8105969182/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/79824934@N08/8105907560/
October 26th, 2012 at 8:22 am
Once I switched to digital photography, I always shoot in color in the camera (especially since I shoot mostly in RAW mode – only color) and do any B+W conversions typically in Photoshop. I enjoy using the color sliders to achieve the effects I would obtain by using colored filters and B+W film – except that I can get the effect of using several filters on the same frame.
Here is an example that I processed in Photoshop to lighten the yellow of the flower and darken the greens of the leaves.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11218418@N08/7908954470/in/photostream
October 26th, 2012 at 9:23 am
I love mono images, and I look for and photograph the detail in things. When people ask what sort of photos I like to take, I tend to say I am a ‘bit’ photographer, that is I look for the interesting bits. It’s not macro. I think mono works well in helping the interesting bits speak for themselves. Colour is often distracting, but of course one is not better than the other – they are just different.
I shoot raw and I’d probably say 80%+ of my photos end up mono. At Camera Club, we have always had a mono section, so I was encouraged to experiment with mono and from participation, I found out that I love it. I use Lightroom and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.
Anyone using LR, if you don’t already know it, the V key on your keyboard will create a B&W image, hit V once to get and idea of the potential of it being B&W, hit V again to turn it back to colour. I don’t recommend you use this create a mono image, play with the sliders, export it etc, but start hitting that V and have a look.
October 26th, 2012 at 9:26 am
I don’t take any in BW although my DSLR is capable of it. I take everything in color/RAW and process some in BW in Photoshop later. I process the color RAW as color JPG and then crop and change to BW if I decide. Not sure why, but somebody on this site suggested doing it that way. It works for me.
October 26th, 2012 at 11:38 am
Still finding my feet exactly on what style i like and think monochrome is one of my favourites.
Just joined my camera club several months ago and realised half of my shot submitted were black & white.
I think when i look around and see the world and compared to what you see say in magazines it is very washed out.
I like to see nice coloured shots but half the time they are so hypercoloured they look unreal.
Shots i take i try to tell a story, so when colour is added I feel sometimes this detracts from what i am trying to depict.
Couple of cases in point.
October 26th, 2012 at 11:41 am
unsure if my last post will show actual shots. He are my examples.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dennisrenton/8120544899/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dennisrenton/8120562614/
October 26th, 2012 at 12:19 pm
I believe black and white photographs shows emotions than the colored ones.
http://raghavendra-mobilephotography.blogspot.in/search/label/black%20and%20white
October 26th, 2012 at 12:37 pm
I usually only convert a final edit of an image to black & white when I feel the original image lacks color over all. Then I feel it is a good candidate for making it black & white. I always shoot in color, later converting to black & white using the amazing Silver Efex Pro. To shoot black & white in camera is to lose a lot of data in the image, and of course to never have the color version, which you may ultimately prefer!
I just posted a stylized image of an Audi R8 supercar that I made black & white. I describe the editing workflow process in the post as well:
http://jasoncollinphotography.com/blog/2012/10/25/audi-r8-hdr-highly-stylized-black-white-image-florida-custom.html
October 26th, 2012 at 12:42 pm
When I am shooting for B\W like when I do Hollywood Style portraits I shoot in RAW & jpeg. I set my camera to Mono so I can view my images on my camera in B\W. When I load the RAW images into my computer they come in as color files. I do most of my B\W conversions With Nics Silver Effects 3.
October 26th, 2012 at 1:13 pm
Only shoot in color/RAW, process for BW in Lightroom and Photoscape. Generally the image will be pushed strongly up or down in exposure, depending on the specific photo. Gives me either strong, dark, high contrast images or very light, ethereal images. I only use bw when I feel it strengthens the image.
October 26th, 2012 at 1:45 pm
I mostly take family photos. I turn some into b&w when I want to use Scrapbooking papers that clash with the original colours.
October 26th, 2012 at 2:19 pm
I always shoot in colour. In PP some shots hit my eye as good candidates for B&W. I then PS them to B&W. More often I find myself then trying sepia tonal effects to great effect. Trying to learn Lightroom but my fulltime job and family reduce my opportunities.
October 26th, 2012 at 2:21 pm
Oooops. Forgot to mention that I am surprised that you did not include a smaller section for B&W users. eg 0-1% or 1-10%. Just my thouights.
October 26th, 2012 at 11:04 pm
During a recent trip to Yosemite, Sequoia and the Owens Valley I took nearly 3000 images. I always shoot in camera raw to gather all available information then I use polaroid filters when there is loads of light so I can choose the best end result. Often when there is an overexposed or unusually bright situation I choose the B&W conversion in PS to get an end result where color balance is not an issue. Acuity and shadow become an interesting interplay along with some tone tweeks. I used to think that Ansel Adams was the finest overall photographer and now that I’ve visited his domain I am absolutely convinced that he was.
October 27th, 2012 at 2:36 am
What i am looking for is an image viewer which will allow one to set an option which shows black and white images whilst scrolling through a folder. I know picasa can do this but it takes control of your images. if faststone could do this it would be perfect.
October 27th, 2012 at 10:45 am
I take raw+jpeg setting the jpeg to b&w. this gives me a chance to see better in b&w. if there is an image that I want to work up I convert my raw file to b&w and interpret it myself.
November 8th, 2012 at 5:09 am
when there is a colour distortion on skin that detracts from the overall feeling of the photo, I’ll usually flick in B&W. Also if there is great texture but not enough colour, I’ll put into B&W. Ive had some shots in colour that I was going to get rid of, tried in B&W and they are brilliant. I always check as a B&W prior to trashing! You can also create some really nice evocative, romantic styles with B&W
December 15th, 2012 at 8:46 am
B&w photography is really magical. I shot some raw b&w on my canon dslr, but was dissapointed. It has no character, no soul.. That’s why I still shoot tri x onmmy Leica m6. Some times push it a stop or two to increase grain.. I love the texture of real photography.
December 15th, 2012 at 8:53 am
Also, I believe in capturing the movement correctly the first time, instead of tweaking everything in post. To me, that’s just being a computer guru rather than photography. I see all these digital pics with increased everything, plain flat and soulless..
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