Also in this issue:
- Guess who's on the cover?
- Colorado and London, here we come!
- MyPublisher Books
- Least likely place to license an image
Classic B&W without Photoshop
Once upon a time, back in the 1940’s, there was a “classic” way to shoot black-and-white portraits. The Caucasian face was almost a pure white, like these pictures of Gretta Garbo and Shirley MacLaine above. To get this effect, the photographer would shoot B&W film and place a red filter over the lens, light the subject well, and overexpose a tad. (And of course makeup helped complete the look.)
You can’t get that look just by shooting in color and “desaturating” the image in Photoshop – the face will come out grey and look much less impressive. Instead you have to use a Photoshop function called the “channel mixer”, where you can choose which original colors get highlighted in the conversion to B&W. Below are some examples of color portraits converted to B&W by desaturation, and then by the Channel Mixer method. Which conversion do you like better? (Click on any photo to make it bigger.)
