George Schaub

CS 3 Beta..Black and White Improvements and Changes

by George Schaub

I have always enjoyed black and white printing, and have used the tools in
various versions of Photoshop to go from color to black and white. Now, with
CS3 (beta) there are even more tools to work with, some of which are improvements
or at leastrefineme...

According to the folks at Tribeca Imaging Laboratories (TIL), digital cameras (and I might add many types of film) "can't see purple." They go on to say, "The digital color model generates a limited spectrum. Any user can confirm this by simply pointing a camera at a deep blue or purple object and comparing the colors on the camera's LCD or computer...

A camera enforces a “framing” of the world before you. While you can choose various aspect ratios (from standard to panoramic, from 3:4 to 6:19) the fact remains that you always have to choose what to include and what to leave out of the photo. It’s like constructing a box and deciding what to put inside it. Making those decisions often involves utilizing certain compositional guidelines and tools that artists have used in the past, although like any rules they “are made to be broken.” When deciding which guidelines to apply always remember that content rules, and that context helps tell the tale.

While the usual photographic rules, such as using shutter speed to portray motion
(slow to blur, fast to freeze) and using focal length, aperture and camera-to-subject
distance to create a certain depth of field apply to both film and digital photography,
digital offers some intriguing options for making camera settings. In some cases
these settings relate to film photography settings, or choosing a specific film
for its "personality", but with digital you can alter these settings
on every frame you shoot and not be restricted to the attributes of a particular
film you might have loaded in the camera.

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