I think that’s why it’s better in Photoshop to desaturate rather than convert to greyscale.You shouldn’t go edit->mode->greyscale, but rather go edit->adjust->desaturate. I’m pretty sure it’s the same in PSPro.
Most digital cameras have a B&W mode nowadays, I think (unless you have a pretty old one, Blonde
When you look at all the information available in a colour photo, it can confuse you a bit. You can see that one part is yellow, and one part is pink, but you don’t necessarily see that they are tonally exactly the same.
When you strip out the colour and see only the blacks, whites, and greys, you are forced to see that what makes up the image is tonal differences only. That makes it all tehmore striking to the eye, it simplifies, and also draws attention to features of the image that colour can obscure.
They say that a digital camera’s CCD and slide film, both have wider tonal range range than color negative film. They both can get easily “burned” by bright light (I have my camera permamently stopped down 2/3EV), but they can render dark tones better. Color negative film is quite the opposite. It can tolerate bright light, but has a problem with black tones.
I am a digital amateur photographer myself. I’ve never shot film, let alone develop and print it. Those are things I’ve heared from professional photographers. Maybe I’ve got the terminology wrong. :o
If you’re interested, there’s a topic that addresses the neg/chrome issue here. Like I said, I prefer the look of slides, but negs give me more latitude and are far easier to work with in high-contrast situations. I would probably agree that the tones in dark areas of a chrome are more distinct and nicer than in a neg, but overall, a neg captures much more visual information (especially, as you said, in the highlights.)
It is interesting to compare the preference for monochrome in “serious” photography to the use of color in other graphic media.
I don’t think charcoal drawings are considered to be more “artsy/professional” than ones done in pastels.
But what about comic books? Are color comics just for the superheroes in tights? I guess I was a little surprised to find that Art Spiegelman’s latest work was in color.
Cinema seems to have shaken off any bias against color in “serious” films. There are still some interesting and beautiful B&W movies being made (Roger Deakins got a well-deserved Oscar nomination for his black-and-white cinematography on The Man Who Wasn’t There, for example), but nowadays I don’t think anybody believe that B&W is necessary for a film to be taken seriously.
No kidding. Look at National Geographic. I hope that would qualify for “serious” photography. When was the last time you saw a black-and-white photograph in that publication? NatGeo is the premiere publication for what can be achieved with color photography and the perfect example of where color trumps black-and-white. Most of the photos in NatGeo would lose most of their drama and impact if they were rendered in grayscale.
Secondly, there are plenty of fine art photographers that work in color. Cindy Sherman is a pretty universally revered “high art” photographer. Most of her work (after the Untitled Film Stills series) is in color. Robert Mapplethorpe was more known for his black-and-whites, but he used color in some of his flower work. What about Annie Liebovitz? Or is her art too commercial to be “serious”?
95% of all newspaper and magazine photography is color. Tell me of those millions of pictures there’s no art to be found.
True, but he did that with color, as well.
I suggest you shoot in B&W then get a decent editing program like paintshhop pro. Working with color originals gives you more information to work with and allows some techniques simialar to using color filters in B&W to selectively change contrast.
I think you may have it backwards. B&W film has the widest ranged followed by color negs then chromes. Digital typically has a narrower dynamic range than negs, closer to slide film. It’s not too bad with large CCDs when shooting raw images but much worse in consumer cameras with small sensors shooting straight to JPG.