Create a striking black-and-white photo

Using iPhoto or Photoshop to enhance your images

It’s crazy how a photo can make me feel. Photos bright and full of light and colour lift my spirits. But today, I’m going to talk to you about my romance with black-and-white photography; why I love what I see and how to get it.

Black-and-white photographs make me look harder and longer at every line, every shadow, and every detail. More importantly, it can make me feel deeply moved. Melodramatic? Not if you’re an artist, and these days, it seems like most everyone is. So thank you for your filters, Instagram, but I want more.

Sometimes quick fixes are good, but I never looked at this critically until I wanted more control over my edits. A majority of the photos in The Ontarion are black-and-white, and I want photos where darks are dark, and lights are lights. Perhaps this is why I occasionally refer to myself as a “contrast whore.” Bland shades of grey that blend together will just not do.

Using a contrast slider is the easy way to get more definition. Slide left to decrease contrast, or right to increase to your heart’s content.

When more control over lights and darks is needed, this is where “levels” come in. Levels are read on a histogram, so the more data (or higher bars) on histograms indicate a higher prevalence of that particular tone. If the image is dark, the histogram will have a majority of data on the left side, and vice versa with lighter images. This means that data regarding lights/whites can be seen on the right side of the histogram, darks/blacks on the left side, and midtones/greys in the middle.

One slider coincides with each of the three tonal areas as the bottom of the histogram. Sliding the whites, blacks, or midtone toggles to the right will result in a darkening of that particular tone, and dragging the slider to the left will lighten the tone in the photograph.

I see levels as a way of adjusting contrast with more freedom, although, I often cheat and use contrast and then tweak it with levels. Levels allows freedom to further lighten highlights and darken shadows and blacks so they stand out against each other, thus creating more detail.

To access levels in iPhoto, simply select Edit > Adjust. To access levels in Photoshop, select the drop down menu Image > Adjustments > Levels. Photoshop also provides a more efficient way to non-destructively change levels through adjustment layers, but this is a story for another day.