what is the best way to convert a color photo to black and white

D
Posted By
davidkchan
Jul 21, 2003
Views
259
Replies
3
Status
Closed
I’m trying to convert color photos to black and white. I’ve tried "remove color from the Enhance menu, but the picture still seems to be a bit magenta looking. Should I turn the photo to grayscale instead? Thanks.
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LK
Leen Koper
Jul 21, 2003
Being a photographer well educated in the use of filters in the pre digital century I apply some freeware. I’m used to apply glass filters. "FilterSIM" to enhance the image and "Bworks" to convert to B&W.

This software can be downloaded from:
<http://www.mediachance.com/digicam/index.html>

Unfortunately this is not availalble as an Elements plug in. so you will have to save the new image and after conversion return to Elements.

The effects of this filter software should be pretty similar to the method Chris described.

Leen
CS
Chuck Snyder
Jul 24, 2003
David, grayscale is only one of the ways to create so-called black and white images, which are not black and white but rather shades of gray. The color information that you’re throwing away when converting to grayscale may actually contain the tones that will give you a sharper-looking ‘black and white’ image. There are several threads in the archives of this forum that discuss alternate methods.

Having said that, there’s also the issue that ink jet printers – even good ones like yours – don’t do that great a job on black-and-white unless the ink cartridges can be swapped out to provide a so-called ‘light black’ component to render better shades of gray. Again, several threads in the forum discuss this problem and its potential solutions.

Hope that gives you a start.

Chuck
SR
Schraven Robert
Jul 25, 2003
It is true that there have been a few threads about B&W pictures on this forum. This topic however goes just that bit futher.
I too have been looking to get the "typical" crisp B&W but just didn’t get it. Apart from maybe inadequate lenses (coolpix 990)I even thought that you would get those only if you went infra red, but decided that that wasn’t it either.
I will look at the sites suggested here to futher my knowledge on how to create good B&W images.

Robert

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