black and white setting?

ashley_christy77 · Nov 13, 2003

I've heard that people can set their cameras to a black and white setting. Can I do that with mine? I have a Fuji Finepix 2600

voodoocat · Nov 13, 2003

No need to set it for black and white. Convert it to black and white in a graphic editing program like photoshop, gimp or paint shop pro.

craig · Nov 13, 2003

A few digis do have that option. Most don't. It really is not a bad idea. RGB to grayscale can be tricky. The photo can can turn into a muddy mess. In my experience, I have found that using the channel mixer in photoshop, helps things along nicely. Getting the colour to where you want it, before converting helps things along as well.

voodoocat · Nov 13, 2003

craig said:
RGB to grayscale can be tricky. The photo can can turn into a muddy mess

That's the same function you get with a "black and white" option on the camera. There is software built into the camera that simply desaturates the image.

A much better option would be to desaturate in photoshop or use a gradient map. Then use the curves tool to change the contrast.

craig · Nov 13, 2003

A lot of my commercial work goes to bw. I will try it. Photshop's boundless options are intriguing :shock:

voodoocat · Nov 13, 2003

Yeah, there are a million different ways to get the desired result.

Another nice effect is to bring up hue/saturation and tick colorize. Then pull the saturation slider down to near the bottom. Instant toner!

craig · Nov 13, 2003

Heck Yea! it sure beats the duotone feature. Deleting channels in lab color is always fun as well.

Phodog · Nov 13, 2003

I agree leave it in colour - and change to b&w in photoshop. You get the best of both worlds - it's easier to change colour to b&w than b&w to colour.

Mitica100 · Nov 15, 2003

voodoocat said:
No need to set it for black and white. Convert it to black and white in a graphic editing program like photoshop, gimp or paint shop pro.

I agree Voodoo... I use Photoshop and some free filter I d'loaded from the Internet. Put a free+photoshop+filter search on Google.com and you're bound to find many a filter that will just render your pics in BW. Also some of them have the Silver-Chrome capability, which is very nice.