Photography Tutorials

Oftentimes a vignette is used in photographs for visual impact - simply use the oval tool with a very soft feathering and fill a new layer with black. Adjust the opacity according to your taste, usually 20%-30% seems to work well. Make sure to set the layer under the curves layer, otherwise the vignette will have a different color cast.

To get the richest blacks -darkroom like- use the "Selective Color" tool in a new adjustment layer and pump up the blacks by a few percent. Sometimes I'd use this to open up the whites too.

Some photographs require much more work with masked curve layers or a dodge/burn layer.

<< Black And White Processing 02

With the contrast move we might have lost some detail in the shadows or highlights - in this case I masked all the whites except for the sky and some of the darkest shadows. I used the magic wand for the hilites and a soft brush for the darker parts. The wand usually produces a very hard edged mask - use the gaussian blur tool to soften the edges and get rid of halos. If the result still looks funky, the mask needs some detail work with a brush.

usually I give my photos a slightly warm tone by modifying the red channel. A three dot move from 128 to 131 gives me a subtle result.

<< Black And White Processing 01 | Black And White Processing 03 >>

To get most out of my black and white negatives, I scan them in 16-bit mode with "Auto Levels" activated in VueScan. The "Auto Levels" function provides a very good tonal range from, yeah, white (RGB 255 255 255) and black (RGB 0 0 0). Actually, I scan in Grayscale mode and save the file as an 8-bit tif to save some harddrive space. I don't see any advantage in keeping a 16-bit file, since the histogram is completely intact. Converting to RGB is the first thing I do in Photoshop since I like to give my photographs a warm tone.

Shown here is the flat scan -yuck- it looks exactly like printed on grade 2 in the darkroom, flat as... you know what I'm talking about.

The most cruicial step for a good looking black and white photo is a decent contrast move, without sacrificing tonal range. How do we do that? Rev the engine, open up the curves and give the flat line a nice s-shape... open up the lighter parts a bit and floor the shadows, without losing too much detail (we'll take care of that later, with a bit of masking).
And don't use the Brightness/Contrast "tool" - it will be destructive as a jackhammer to your photograph.

The sample above looks just like printed with a grade 3 or 3.5 filter in the darkroom. beautiful.

Of course you can adjust the s-curve according to the photo and your taste, this is just a recipe, not the final meal...

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A simple rule of thumb for taking photos in daylight without a light meter.
The rule is quite easy to remember - if you’re taking a photo in bright daylight
set the aperture to f/16 and set the shutter speed to be as near as possible to
the same number as the film speed.

So if you’re using ISO 100 film, for example, set the aperture to f/16 and the
shutter speed to 1/125 sec, since 1/125 is the closest shutter speed value to
100 on a typical camera.
If you want to use a different aperture calculate the number of stops away from
f/16 you want to use and then adjust the shutter speed accordingly. For example,
f/11 is one stop larger than f/16, so you’d need to increase your shutter speed
by one stop. So if you’re using ISO 100 film you’d set the aperture to f/11 and
the shutter speed to 1/250 sec.

This rule works because the light output from the sun is a pretty constant value -
the sun itself puts out a nearly constant amount of light at all times.
Only precisely calibrated equipment can detect the light fluctuations of the sun.

here are some variations for a sunny day:
Full sun - f/16
Half sun - f/11
Open shade - f/8
Darker shade - f/5.6
Darkest shade - f/4

with a little bit of practice, you won't need your lightmeter anymore.

follow this link for Fred Parker's excellent exposure guide.