Create Black and White Images

Original Color Image.

Converted with Red Channel Overlaid on Grayscale Image

Creating a Sepia Tone print.

Final Sepia Tone.

Are you looking for ways to make some extra cash in these hard financial times? Do you own a digital camera system? Can you edit images on your computer? Do you enjoy taking photos and sharing them with others? If you answered yes to these questions, then you might be able to make a good second income with digital photography. And, if you are interested, you may even be able to make a new career with your photography skills.

Digital photography has come a long way in just a few short years. Cameras are now able to do some amazing things thanks to computer technology. Some of the new systems just coming to market include the ability to take a photo only when everyone is smiling, and the camera can tell you if some one blinked! Wow, now that is amazing.

Photography is a fun and exciting art and people with creative skills will always be in demand. And in this day and age of amazing color camera and printer systems, many people are looking back at the art of black and white photography. Black and white photos gave always had an intrinsically artistic aura about them. Ansel Adams developed the Zone System, in an effort to make black and white photography more predictable and consistent. In his day, this was a time consuming and labor intensive task.

But, with the computer systems of today, and the inexpensive ink jet printers available, just about anyone can create good black and white images.

So, if you are interested in creating black and white images from your color photos, let me show you a couple of techniques to create great images. You can see samples of the conversions, beginning with an original color wedding photo and the method used to create the black and white versions at the blog mentioned at the end of this article.

If you open an image in Adobe Photoshop, and take a look at the channels, you will notice that the Red channel always has an interesting, bright, almost infra red appearance. In the first example shown in the blog, this Red channel is first copied to the clipboard, the image in converted to Grayscale via the Image, Mode menu option. Once the image is in Grayscale mode, Paste the copied Red channel on top of the newly created Grayscale image. Next, lower the opacity of this new layer to around 50 percent, or just until you have a visually pleasing result. In most cases, the resulting Black and White photo will have a beautiful texture, with a more pleasing result than just the default Photoshop conversion. Of course, this is just one method.

Another method is to use the Black and White adjustment option in the image menu. This method gives you the ability to refine the grayscale appearance of each color in the original image. Many people prefer to use this method, but in my opinion, there are many ways to achieve the result you are looking for, and so I believe you should experiment, have fun, and discover other ways to achieve the desired result.

Now, another option is to create a Sepia print, or a Duotone. This is the recreation of an old technique, where the image has a slightly brownish/reddish tint. The process of achieving this look is via the Duotone option in Photoshop. So, once you have converted your image into a Grayscale image, you go back to the Image menu and select the Duotone option from the menu. This will bring up a dialog box, where you can specify the number of colors you want to use, in this case, a Sepia tone, we want to add a reddish cast, so we will be adding just one other color to the Grayscale image. By clicking on the color square you can select any color you would like to use. Of course, you may want to create an image that has a different color cast, such as a blue etc. Entirely up to you. Once you have selected the color, you then click on the small graph on the left, which will allow you to tweak to effect the color has on the final image.

Now, the final piece of the puzzle is the printer you use to print the results for your client. You will want to purchase a printer with 8 or 9 colors. This type of printer will have two or three black ink cartridges, which will enable you to create a rally beautiful Black and White image, full of the rich tones and lots of detail, to create a truly outstanding image.

Remember, people do not mind paying for quality. If you spend the time to input your creativity to get the images you and your client desire, you will have a client who will be recommending your services where ever they go. Certainly, every time they show someone one of the images you created. Your client will forever appreciate your efforts. And as a photographer, that is what it is all about. Client satisfaction. And client satisfaction leads to income. No one will ever be upset for paying for quality results.

Like many professionals, Tom Jackson began his career by shooting weddings. You can make a substantial income shooting weddings with very little overhead. You can get more info on wedding photography, cameras and computer image editing, and see examples of his work, or get more info on how to start your own business http://www.howtoshootweddings.net