[Photography] How converting to black and white can save a photo

[ChewBecca]

It came up in a previous thread that "Black and white is dying out" Mucski

I totally disagree, and going to share an example on how converting an image to black and white can save photos.

Someone elses flashgun went off at the same time as taking this photo. I dont like to use flash unless I really need too, so my camera was set to ISO 6400 f4.0 1/80, not ideal for flash at all...

Converting to black and white saved this photo 100%

Final image:

 

[Detox]

Nicely done, didn't think it was possible to recover such a over-exposed photo. However, if you shot in raw, would it be possible to save it, even without going black/white?

 

[Cyndaquil]

Very good. Show's exactly why Black and White can be good.

Of course theres a lot of other reasons for Black and White ^^

 

[ChewBecca]

Nicely done, didn't think it was possible to recover such a over-exposed photo. However, if you shot in raw, would it be possible to save it, even without going black/white?

I always shoot in RAW. So much information is lost when shooting in jpeg.

I could save as it is on the left, just a case of converting. No matter how much I play with exposure etc its still over exposed.

If you have the capability to shoot in raw, do it. You should have a program that came with the camera to process raw files, or get lightroom. Lightroom is amazing.

 

[Wucas]

I always shoot in RAW. So much information is lost when shooting in jpeg.

I could save as it is on the left, just a case of converting. No matter how much I play with exposure etc its still over exposed.

If you have the capability to shoot in raw, do it. You should have a program that came with the camera to process raw files, or get lightroom. Lightroom is amazing.

Isn't that the truth, jpeg only keeps visual colors and compresses it so much. You may lose 25% of your data depending on the model of camera you use, and how it processes the data. Even Photoshop has some basic raw editing tools, so I cannot think of a time you would even want to save in anything else.

As for the original thread, this is pretty sweet. You sure pulled that over exposure back into something actually usable, which is pretty impressive (and wouldn't have been possible if saving in jpeg I will add). I don't agree that black and white will ever truly fade. Yes, visually graphics is pushing to a position where color is more accepted, but mono is still such a stable, I just can't see why it would ever be removed completely.

 

[Droppy]

Nicely example you got there! Speaking of Black n' white, I've asked a week ago on reddit a conversion of black n' white picture into colorized one (Recolourize image, I mean), check out the result (I know it is offtopic, but I get very excited with black n' white stuff):

Spoiler

They are my gramma and my gramma's father.

But as Detox said (Yay, can mention u now), I didn't knew you could do this with such over-exposed, I was very wrong.

 

[ChewBecca]

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This is the set the photo is from. As you can see its really colourful. I don't know why people use flash, because you just white out the colours. And one of the things I love so much about gig photography is the colours!