What, no Black and White setting

[freeway66]

I am now taking photography courses here in my home town. The other night we were on the topic of B&W. I have now realized that my D70s has no setting for B&W . That mean that all touching up will have to be done in Photoshop CS2????

[Prospero]

Originally Posted by freeway66

I am now taking photography courses here in my home town. The other night we were on the topic of B&W. I have now realized that my D70s has no setting for B&W . That mean that all touching up will have to be done in Photoshop CS2????

Yes, I'm affraid you will have to make your pictures black and white by post processing. This can be done with photoshop CS2 or any other photo-editor tool (e.g. Nikon Capture NX, Google Picasa, etc.)

An advantage of using CS2 is that you can create an action and use the batch mode so that it will turn a large selection of files (e.g a folder) into black and white. Read the photoshop help file to see how this works exactly.

That said, for the best results I would turn every image to black and white individually, as there is always something you can change in the levels and contrast to make your pictures even more dramatic.

[XaiLo]

Originally Posted by freeway66

I am now taking photography courses here in my home town. The other night we were on the topic of B&W. I have now realized that my D70s has no setting for B&W . That mean that all touching up will have to be done in Photoshop CS2????

There are real advantages to not having or using a cameras black and white setting. with color you can choose to use a particular channel with RGB you have an option of three black and white pics of the bat... four with CYMK and so on as mentioned you can also use levels to adjust the picture. Calculations can come up with some real interesting results

[freeway66]

Thanks for the information

[wh0128]

One thing not mentioned, that if you are using CS2 try to not use the Mode>Gray Scale. It produces some really poor contrast pictures. The technique you should use when turning your color pictures into B&W's is to Desaturate them by going to Image>Adjustments>Desaturate, or going to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation, and bring the Saturation down to 0. This way you have a little bit more flexibility at changing the levels in your B&W shot.

[idledown]

It is a good thing

Why let the camer dictate how your image should look in B&W when the human eye can do a far better job?

ID

[gmtech79]

You also may want to try using the channel mixer set to monochrome and also adjustment layers. Just off of the red, blue, green channels alone you can get 3 very different black and white pictures and when you start using adjustment layers you can really fine tune the final image. You have much more control over the final result than just doing desaturate.

[idledown]

I used this at work a few months ago and loved it!

http://www.alienskin.com/exposure/index.html

Exposure brings the look and feel of film to digital photography. Simulate the warmth and softness of real world film, both color and black and white. Reproduce realistic film grain, and simplify your digital photography workflow.

You can now digitally simulate the vivid colors of Velvia(r), the rich blacks of Kodachrome(r), the sensitivity of Ektachrome(r), and the characteristics of dozens of other film stocks. Exposure also models the size, shape, and color of real world film grain. Use this level of subtle reproduction to simulate the distinct looks of films such as Ilford(r) 3200 Delta and long discontinued Ektachrome EES and GAF(r) 500.