A Day In The Life

Turning An Image Black And White

Here I used an image which has been taken at The Royal William Yard, in Plymouth. When looking at the original photograph, it does not really do much for me. Although it is nice and sunny, the original image does not grab my eye. I wanted to see how I could transform this image on Photoshop, changing it to black and white, without ruining the quality of the image.

I firstly opened the image up in camera raw and started of by boosting the saturation, vibrancy, clarity and the shadows. This makes my image look very over saturated, but this is what we want, as it will create a strong contrast when we turn it to black and white. After turning the image into black and white, I then boosted the blue and Cyan, as this made the sky even darker. To even out the image, I brought out the yellow colours in the photograph which makes the clouds look vivid and bright.

I was rather shocked as to how my image turned out and I was thoroughly pleased with the outcome. It amazed me how you can turn such a bland image, into an image that looks so powerful and is so full of drama. Comparing the two images side by side, I most certainly prefer the black and white. I find that colors can be terribly distracting in some images and can take the focus away from your subject, especially in portraiture photography.