Does this photo appear cool (color temp) to anyone?

eric-holmes · Nov 2, 2010

I am having a hard time nailing down WB in my black and white photographs. In color this photo appeared cool to me so I applied a slight warm photo filter to it. When I converted to black and white, it appeared more sepia than black and white. So this is the photo in black and white without the warm filter.

Or my thought process may be totally wrong and WB may not affect black and white conversions that much. Thoughts?

redtippmann · Nov 2, 2010

I don't see any sepia, just black, grey, and white pixels.

eric-holmes · Nov 2, 2010

I think you completely missed the question.

Abby Rose · Nov 2, 2010

I'm not entirely sure I understand the question either, but I know when I convert a picture to bw and then change the temperature, it changes the tones in the bw image. :shrug: Maybe you already knew that, and it wasn't what you were asking. Could you maybe rephrase your question?

But I don't think it hurts to adjust the wb in the color photo before the conversion, though. You can always tweak it later, in the bw version, if it didnt work out.

eric-holmes · Nov 2, 2010

Abby Rose said:
I'm not entirely sure I understand the question either, but I know when I convert a picture to bw and then change the temperature, it changes the tones in the bw image. :shrug: Maybe you already knew that, and it wasn't what you were asking. Could you maybe rephrase your question?

But I don't think it hurts to adjust the wb in the color photo before the conversion, though. You can always tweak it later, in the bw version, if it didnt work out.

Does this photo appear cool?

Abby Rose · Nov 2, 2010

It appears black and white, which I dont think ever appears either warm or cool. So, I guess not.

You're very sarcastic.

eric-holmes · Nov 2, 2010

Here was the original picture. I thought it looked like it had a cool temp to it.

So I added a warm filter at 15% to give it, what I thought was, a more balanced feel.

Then, when I had it the way I wanted it, I converted it to black and white. The filter made my conversion have a sepia tone to it.

So I was wondering if when I removed the filter from the black and white image, it appeared to have a cool tint to it.

BuS_RiDeR · Nov 2, 2010

Abby Rose said:
It appears black and white, which I dont think ever appears either warm or cool. So, I guess not.

I agree, I think it looks good. But when I think about "cool" or warm" as in relation to photographs... I think of "color temperature" not black and white.

misstwinklytoes · Nov 2, 2010

That's kind of what I was thinking, but I think the B&W looks fine.

Abby Rose · Nov 2, 2010

It's hard to tell because of the red, but I think you are right about the cool in the color version.

I think that the first bw does not have a cool tint, but that it is indeed black and white. Could the second still have the warm filter on top of the actual image, and maybe it didnt get converted to black and white with the rest of the image? This is asked without any knowledge of your editing program or style and whatnot.

All things considered, I actually find that I like the second better (The "sepia").

Derrel · Nov 3, 2010

I would call it Neutral Black and White. Neither warm (not in the Sepia line of hues) and not cold (not in the selenium-toned or cold-tone paper family), but Neutral.

Ron Evers · Nov 3, 2010

The colour shot is definitely cool (blue) even after adjustment as the white of her eyes is still blue.

clanthar · Nov 3, 2010

The first photo is as Derrel said, neutral -- neither cool nor warm. You could switch it's mode to grayscale in Photoshop and not effect it.

The original and the warm filtered photos are very cool -- blue. The white balance is way off. The second b&w photo is warm, it's a tinted grayscale photo. The original and consequently the b&w versions are flat -- the tonal distribution for the girl is compressed. The warm filter further flattened the image.

The amount of change introduced by the filter would not noticeably alter the tone conversion to b&w. It does cause the additional slight contrast loss to transfer to the b&w version created from the filtered version. I white balanced the original, adjusted the contrast and converted that to a slightly warm b&w. Nice photo by the way, you captured just the right moment.

Joe