Black and white with color

Out of focus foregrounds

B l a c k a n d W h i t e w i t h Color

One of the first things I learned in art was that emphasis had to be placed on the subject. This can be done several ways. For example, a spot light or beam of light directed to the subject makes it stand out. An out of focus background does the same thing. Making the subject very light when the entire background is dark is also effective. I learned this from the famous painting by Rembrandt, the Nightwatch.

Another way to place emphasis on a subject is by combining color with black and white. The contrast of the color against monochromatic tones is dramatic, and the eye can’t help but focus entirely on the subject.

A case in point is the composite below where I placed a Venetian model on a balcony of a church in St. Petersburg, Russia. Because the model was on a layer, it was easy to convert the facade of the church to black and white. I did this using Image > adjustments > hue/saturation in Photoshop. I simply moved the satu-

Carnival in Venice Workshop

Outrageous costumes in a medieval environment! Venice is great to visit and photograph any time, but during Carnival it’s magical. There is nothing like it anywhere in the world. Exotic masks, stunning colors, classic images.

Feb. 15 - 21, 2021

Snowy owls workshop

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Photoshop Workshop

The setting is in my home, and in this two day workshop you’ll learn enough to be truly dangerous in Photoshop! How to replace a sky, how to fix all kinds of photographic problems in your pictures, how to handle blown highlights, how to be incredibly creative . . . and more. April 11-12, 2020

ration slider all the way to the left. Look how the subject stands out against the monochrome background.

Without doing any compositing, you can dramatize an image by using a simple selection. In the portrait at right, I selected the lips of the model using the lasso tool and then used Select > inverse. This selected everything except the lips. This time, because there are so many subtle tones in the eyes, the black gloves, and the model’s dark hair, I used Image > adjustments > black and white to convert the large portion of the image to monochrome.

Keep in mind when you convert any portion of an image to black and white, contrast is always lost. You have to regain the contrast using a tool in Photoshop. Sometime I’ll use Levels (Image

> adjustments > levels), and sometimes I’ll bring the image back into Adobe Camera Raw (or Lightroom) and tweak the contrast there.

Another technique I’ve used to combine color with black and white doesn’t involve digital manipulation at all. For the studio shot at left, the model wore a black and white patterned dress, a black hat, and red gloves. I shot this from a ladder looking down on the floor. The checkerboard pattern was a large piece of vinyl I had purchased.

I took the photo on the next page of rugged mountains in Bolivia at 13,000 feet just outside the capital, La Paz. I used the quick selection tool in Photoshop to select the land forms and then used Select > inverse to grab only the sky. Using the hue/saturation dialog box, I then turned the sky into a monochrome. To

add some of the contrast back, I used the contrast slider as well as the clarity slider in Adobe Camera Raw. Using the same dialog box, I desaturated the mountains to create a muted image.

For the purple iris below, I made a black and white gradient sim- ulating a studio spot light. The flower stands out dramatically against the background, and the white spot further directs our attention to the subject. I made the foreground/background color boxes at the bot- tom of the tools palette white/ black, respectively, and then I chose the gradient tool. By dragging the cursor from the center of the flower to the up- per right corner, I defined the size of the white spot. Drag- ging the cursor a shorter dis- tance makes the spot smaller in size. §

When the gradient tool is selected, five icons appear in the left portion of the tool bar. Choose the icon second from the left. This gives you a cir- cular gradient. That’s what I used to create this spotlight.