Photo Editing - Black and White

Besides cropping, enhancing the blacks and increasing the vibrance or saturation, another photo editing skill is to know when to turn a color image into a black and white one. Those of you who did Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, Minor White or Robert Mapplethorpe for your PPTs already understand the power of black and white photography.

Having grown up in the days of "Pan-X" slow speed, fine grain back and white film, I have often missed, since I went digital, the pure joy of loading up my old Nikon FM2 and heading out for a day of intense shooting with an eye towards shadows and lines.

So, take a look at the above two pictures I took last week along North Carolina's Blue Ridge Parkway. Which do you think has the most "power"? Please consider this as you edit your own photostory pictures. My own thought is that when color does not dominate the picture, either in a direct way or a subtle way, then the image may often be more striking in black and white.

In Photoshop you can change the "mode" in the "Image"menu. In Microsoft Office Picture Manager go to Edit>Col0r>Saturation. Click here, http://www.photohowto.info/how-create-black-and-white-image-using-picasa, for the instructions in Picasa,