Photography Foundations: Black and White

1. Introduction

• Welcome
• Why black and white?
• Suggested prerequisites
• Using the exercise files

2. What Is Black-and-White Photography?

• Is it really black and white?
• How gray corresponds to color
• The medium of black and white
• The vocabulary of black and white
• The physiology of black and white
• How a camera's image sensor captures an image

3. Shooting in Black and White

• Preparing the camera
• Light revisited
• Seeing in black and white
• Taking a black-and-white expedition
• Finding and shooting a black-and-white image
• Shooting a tone-based subject
• Exposing for black and white

4. Black-and-White Post-Production

• The nature of grayscale images
• Converting to black and white using Photoshop CS4 or CS5
• More about the Black & White dialog box
• Converting to black and white using Black & White adjustment layers
• Converting to black and white in Camera Raw
• Making an advanced tonal correction
• Doing more tonal corrections
• Calming down highlights
• Vignetting
• The trestle images
• Handling tricky skies
• Doing a selective black-and-white conversion
• Toning
• Split-toning
• High-key and low-key images
• Diffusion
• Using Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro 2 plug-in

5. Printing in Black and White

• Selecting a printer
• Preparing the image for print
• Configuring the Print dialog
• Evaluating a print

Conclusion

• Goodbye