Black & White Photography: Using Color Filters to Enhance Your Film & Digital Images

1. Introduction & Class Overview: [MUSIC] Color filters and the science behind them are an essential part of black and white photography, both when shooting with photographic film or creating digital edit in programs like Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. I'm Dominic Righini-Brand, and I've been using color filters to enhance my black and white photography throughout my career as a photographer, designer, and teacher. In this class, I'll be showing you how you can enhance your black and white photography by using color filters in your workflow. This class is designed for digital photographers, media editors, and designers, who want to create exciting and original black and white edits, and traditional film photographers who want to get the most out of their photography when shooting with 35-millimeter and medium format black and white films. We will start by discussing why black and white photography is still important today and looking into the theory behind black and white film photography and using physical color filters when shooting on film. Then we'll explore how color filters can be used to improve the quality of your black and white photographs or image edits, run through each of the color filters and how they can be used. Look into how to replicate those looks digitally and enhance your black and white photograph in Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw, and Adobe Photoshop. I will also share a few quick tips for creating versatile presets for editing your images. This class is for intermediate to advanced level students. To get the most out of this class, you'll need to have a good understanding of photography's terminology, techniques, and processes, and have some experience editing photographs in Adobe Lightroom apps, Adobe Camera Raw or Adobe Photoshop. Join me in this class and I will guide you through the weird and wonderful world of using color filters to enhance your black and white photography. [MUSIC] 2. Why Use Color Filters: Using color filters and black and white photography is a great way to enhance the overall quality of the photographs which you take. There is a range of different color filters which you can utilize in different situations. Color filters and their digital counterparts in programs like Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop effect the tonal range in your photographs and how they're reproduced in black and white. Knowing what filter to use, in which situation or what filter to use when dealing with a tricky image edit on the computer afterwards, will speed up your workflow and drastically improve the quality of your photographs and allow you to create a more desirable look. A set of filters is a relatively inexpensive upgrade to a photographic kit but it will give you that extra edge and flexibility when photographing subjects using black and white 35-millimeter and medium format films. Knowing how color filters work, will enable you to produce better results when creating black and white edits of your digital photographs in Adobe's digital darkrooms afterwards. I first got into using color filters in my black and white photography when I was a photography student. We were shown how magenta and yellow filters in the darkroom can affect photographic prints. Like all photography students, I was particularly impressed by how magenta increased the contrast of my photographic prints and made them punchier. Needless to say, many of my early prints had far too much contrast, much to the [inaudible] of my tutors. This newfound understanding, however, got me using the color filters, which I had as a part of my camera kit and had been gathering dust because I did not understand which filter to use in a particular situation or how they can improve a black and white photograph's visual qualities. Nowadays, I use the same knowledge and understanding when editing my digital photographs in programs like Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop. Black and white photography is special and timeless. Before we get into all of the nitty-gritty technical stuff, let's have a brief look at the role black and white photography plays, both historically and in our modern world. 3. B&W Photography Nowadays: Black and white photography has transcended time. What started as a simple chemical reaction, which was developed into the first usable photographic process, then into the film stocks which dominated the 20th century, has been reborn as digital photo filters and editing techniques in today's digital darkroom, and in the multitude of apps and presets which exist. Ultimately black and white photography is eventually used by anyone who's into or working with photography! Whether it is a person taken holiday snaps on their phone. That savvy social network user uploading images to Instagram and using the presets and filters available to them. The developer creating those filters, or the professional photographer taking someone's portrait or photographing a wedding. Everyone eventually loves black and whites! When you look at a black and white photograph, you do not look at it the same way as if it was a color photograph. Black and white photography is timeless and the textures, tones, and light captured taken a whole different meaning. So much so that in modern digital photography and in the apps and digital filters which we use nowadays, we strive to replicate black and white photographs as they were once captured on film. Black and white photography has left an indelible mark on society forever. We loved black and white because that's how photography developed. If we were to start again, or something similar to photography was developed by an alien species, then that same love, black and white, might not be replicated. Black and white is us. It is difficult to say when a photographic image must be black and white. And to be fair, some images work well in black and white or color. However, some images are enhanced when photographed in or processed as black and white in the digital darkroom afterwards. Sometimes this is due to their subject matter with black and white seemingly making the image more impactful. I think this is due to the removal of unwanted distractions. Because when an image is black and white, it is in a purer form and therefore easier to study. Sometimes it is due to the light and how the light falls on a particular texture or surface. These are what I would call ‘photographers photographs’. The kind of photograph which was taken by photographer for no other reason than to capture or share the aesthetics of the moment. With time and experience you can learn to recognize scenes and subjects which can be photographed or edited in black and white. Black and white can be particularly useful when photographing on gloomy days because it enhances or hides dreary scenes, allowing you to concentrate on the composition, details, and textures. This can often be the case when photographing architecture, cityscapes, and street photography. Because we cannot master the weather. And black and white can also be useful in photographing indoors where artificial lighting can cause yellow tungsten colors. However, you cannot just snap in black and whites and expect it to work amazingly in each and every situation. You need to analyze your subject or scene and make decisions which take into account the different colors and tones captured, and that's when cutoff filters come into play! Skin tones, both light and dark take on a whole new dimension when photographed in black and white. It is as if you can see how something exists or has existed in the world. Black and white for us, means reality. A good example of this is documentary photography, print it in black and white and it becomes real. This is because we're so used to looking back through our family albums at times gone by and people who are no longer with us. Black and white is familiar to us and associated with our histories, both personal and societal. Color is in the present, because we see in color. But if you are captured in black and white, then you exist forever. Ergo why black and white photography is the essence of portraiture. There are and always will be many applications for black and white photography — both chemical and digital, filter or app — because black and white photography is its own world. So let's quickly look into the theory behind black and white photography and why kind of filters work the way they do. 4. How B&W Photography Works: When photographing with photographic film, a black and white photograph is not actually a black and white photograph. It is a color scene represented in different tones of gray. The chemical reaction which happens when light enters the camera and hits the surface of the photographic film renders different colors in terms of gray. For example, something which is blue will produce a different tone when compared to something which is green or red. Some tones however, particularly those produced by greens and reds, can end up looking very similar. Meaning that when photographing in black and white or simply converting a digital image into grayscale, you might end up with a flattish looking results if the image has a lot of these colors. Color filters can be used to change the levels of different parts of the color spectrum when represented in black and white, allowing a photographer or image editor to obtain desirable results with images which would otherwise lack depth of tonal contrast. Let's take a look at this in more depth. Back in the olden days, black and white photographic films were orthochromatic. This meant that they could not perceive the entire color spectrum and were sensitive mainly to blue and green light. Consequently, this means that orthochromatic films can be processed in a darkroom when using the red safe light. The increased blue sensitivity of orthochromatic films typically causes blue objects to appear lighter, whilst red objects may appear darker. This is why in some old photographs, people with warmer skin tones appear to have darker skin than they would in real life. Eventually, orthochromatic films were replaced with panchromatic films, which are sensitive to the full color spectrum and therefore create a realistic reproduction of the scene as it appears to the human eye. Photographic film manufacturers still label their films panchromatic, despite the term being somewhat archaic. For example, an Ilford Pan F 50 is a fine-grain panchromatic film. Nowadays, most widely available black and white films are panchromatic. In this class, I'll be talking about using color filters with panchromatic film. To improve overall quality of their photographs, black and white film photographers have long used color filters in certain situations. For example, when photographing a scene which has a lot of green or blue sky, it can be enhanced by using a red filter. If you are into black and white film photography, then having a set of color filters in your kit is essential. Now you would've been mistaken if you fought that the move to digital photography eliminated the need for color filters and, more importantly, the science behind them. In the digital darkroom, on the land of Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, we still have the same basic problem when converting a digital image into black and white. This is because the computer basically converts the color pixels, which make up a digital photograph into grayscale values, thereby effectively replicating the problem of photographing color scenes with black and white film. Whilst you do not actually need physical color filters when shooting your digital photographs, you need a good understanding of how digital color filters can be used to enhance your black and white photographs when editing. Without further ado, let's get into the different filters and how you can use them to enhance your black and white photography. 5. When to Use Different Color Filters: The science behind color filters in black and white photography is an essence based on complementary colors. When you attach a color filter to the front of your camera or apply the same filter digitally, you will lighten the gray scale tones representing the original colors in the scene, which are similar in hue to the color of the filter, and tones representing the hues on the opposite side of the spectrum will be darkened. There are specific color filters which are traditionally used in black and white photography. These include yellow, orange, red, and green, but blue and cyan filters can be used to create certain effects. Let's have a look at each of these filters and when they can be used. The yellow filter is the easiest to use and perhaps the most versatile. Using a yellow filter helps to remove some of the blue and UV light which reduce the contrast in black and white photographs and helps to bring out any clouds in your photos, but not in overly dramatic way like the orange and red filters. Yellow filters enhance the skies in your photographs by gently darkening the blue areas, helping to bring out the whites. Yellow filters are great for outdoors photography, buildings, landscapes, and photographing people. Unlike some other color filters, yellow filters do not drastically alter the exposure in your photograph, meaning that they are still useful in tricky lighting scenarios. Using a red filter can create dramatic, tempestuous-looking skies. This is because it will considerably darken any blue areas in the photograph. However, red filters have a very strong effect on your exposure and most through-the-lens light meters will have trouble automatically compensating for the filter. You'll need to overexpose your photos by several stops when photographing with the red filter. This reduces your margin when photographing in darkened lighting conditions, especially when using slower films. In black and white photography, the rendition of reds and greens can be a little problematic, with both producing similar tones of gray even with panchromatic films. Using a red filter on your camera can help solve this problem because it lightens any red areas and at the same time darkens any green areas in the picture. The orange filter is a halfway house between yellow and red. It gives a stronger effect than the yellow filter, increasing contrast and making the blue colors darker, but it is not the nuclear option of the red filter. In portrait photography, an orange filter can be used to soften skin tones and reduce freckles and blemishes. Like the red filter, it will have a stronger effect on your photographic exposure and cameras with through-the-lens metering will not be able to automatically correct for the filters factor. So it's recommended that you overexpose your photos to compensate by an extra exposure stop. Effectively the opposite of the red filter, when using a green filter, skies, leaves, and trees will become lighter. Red and orange colors will become darker. A green filter can be helpful when green is the predominant color in the photograph, and you want to be able to separate out each of the green tones from each other and other color tones captured in the photograph. A green filter does not cause any problems for through-the-lens metering systems, and the camera's light meter should be able to automatically compensate for the filter. Nature, firstly landscapes and still life photographs taken with a green filter will produce very different results from photographs taken with a red filter. Blue filters are not typically used in black and white photography. However, they can still be used on a camera shooting with black and white film to create certain effects. A blue filter will lighten the blues and darken any yellows, oranges, and reds in the photograph. It can be used for separating out these colors in the scene. It will also increase any atmospheric fog or haze in your photographs. It can be useful for creating or accentuating a smoky effect. Cyan is not considered the standard color filter for black and white photography either, but using it together with a panchromatic film allows you to produce a similar look to offer chromatic film by reducing the red light entering the camera. Colors which are red will appear darker in the photographs taken with a cyan filter. This, however, can have some unintended consequences with warm skin tones appearing darker than they should otherwise be. Ergo, this is not a good option if you are into portrait photography unless you're trying to recreate the look of black and white photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These are the basics behind using color filters when shooting black and white photographic film. Using the same principles, you can create different black and white photographic looks digitally. That's what we'll be looking at next. 6. Digital Workflows for B&W Editing: Whilst most digital cameras have options and settings which allow you to shoot in monochrome, shooting in color with a raw file format and then editing your pictures in black and white gives you much more creative control because raw formats retain more information compared to positive file formats like JPEG and TIFF. You can easily replicate the effect of color filters when editing your photographs in Adobe's image editing programs. As with all things digital, you have more flexibility and room for experimentation because you can easily change your mind or create or tend to versions of an edit. You have more tools at your disposal. If you are a photographer or image editor and regularly have to edit and organize a large volume of photographs and work with raw photographs, I highly recommend using Adobe Lightroom or Lightroom Classic for creating your black and white edits. On the other hand, if you are a designer, content creator, or editor, who works with images as a part of a larger workflow, do not necessarily have access to raw photographs, and would rather work to finalize the look of a select image then you'll probably want to work with Adobe Photoshop. However, if you're working in Adobe Photoshop and dealing with positive image formats, adding Camera Raw Filter to your workflow will give you more creative control when compared to Adobe's native editing tools like adjustment layers. I will be covering both workflows in Adobe Photoshop later on. But we'll start with Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw Filter's more advanced functions. These apps share many features and the basic practice behind working with digital color filters and fine-tuning the edits is essentially the same. If you're currently using Adobe Photoshop as a part of your workflow, do not skip ahead because I'll be covering the more advanced tools which are available through Camera Raw Filter, which can be accessed for Adobe Photoshop. Regardless of what software you are using, when creating black and white digital edits, you will need to start with a color photograph or scanned image. This is because pre-made black and white images do not have the required color information to be effectively edited using digital color filters. So get some color photographs, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. B&W Editing Workflow in Adobe LR: Let's start with the techniques or replicating the effect of color filters in Adobe Lightroom. I'll be using Adobe Lightroom Classic, but the tools and techniques will be the same in Adobe Lightroom, formerly known as Lightroom Mobile and then Adobe Camera Raw. So you can follow along in the app of your choice. With your images loaded and ready to go, go to the development tab in Adobe Lightroom Classic. If you are using Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw, open the Edit panel and you will find all the same settings I'll be using. Your photographs should be correctly exposed and you should avoid using photographs which have been heavily processed previously. If you're working with a previously edited image, you might need to reset the settings to its original state so you can start with a clean slate. My photograph here is as well shot on the camera and has only a small adjustment made to its exposure. With the photograph you want to edit selected, stop by selecting black and white treatment. This will convert your image into black and white and the profile here will automatically change to Adobe monochrome. Now open the profile browser by clicking on this button, or click on the profile name here and select Browse from the drop-down menu. Select black and white profiles and scroll to the very bottom of the set where you will find profiles which mimic different color filters. If you haven't used profiles before or didn't know that they existed, you've been missing a lot. Without getting into too much technical stuff, profiles affect the initial interpretation of colors and tones in your image, which helps you achieve certain looks without affecting the settings and sliders in the development tab or Edit panel, which you can adjust separately to fine-tune the look of your image. The standard black and white color filter profiles here are a great starting point for editing your black and white photographs because you'll be able to apply the theory we have covered in the first part of the class. The other nondescript black and white profiles are also worth exploring. But in this class, we'll concentrate on the five available color filter profiles here, which will give us a predictable result similar to what could be expected from the physical filters you attach to your film camera. For example, in this image, I have a blue sky with clouds, which I wanted to be more contrasty and there was also an orange van. When I apply a standard monochrome profile, all these tones become a similar gray, which gives the image flat appearance. To separate the different tones. I can try using one of these filters. Yellow has quite a subtle effect. Orange makes the originally orange van lighter as expected and the sky a little darker compared to the yellow filter. Red's effect is pretty similar with orange's. It does, however, create a bit more contrast in the sky and lightens the red marquee here. For this image, I'm going to stick with orange filter because it lightens the van, darkens the sky, but keeps any red colors darkish tones. Profiles also have an amount of value which you can adjust. This controls the intensity of the effect on the image. I'm going to turn it up a little from its default setting, just to make the sky a little darker and the van a little lighter. Applying a color filter profile is just the first step in editing your black and white photograph. When you are happy with the profile choice, close the profile browser to return to all the editing panels. If you need to, you can adjust the amount without going back to the profile browser here. It is convenient for little tweaks as you go. In most situations, the color changes done by the color filter profile are a good starting point. But to fine-tune the tones in your image further, you can go to the black and white mix section and further work with the sliders to adjust the representation of different hues and shades of gray. For example, I can further lower the blue value to make the sky even darker. Working with the sliders is great when you know where specific colors were in your photograph. But a lot of colors are not represented by a single hue. To make the editing faster and more visual, you can click on the color widget here and adjust the colors by dragging it up or down over certain areas in your photograph. For example, if I hold and drag it over the van, I can adjust both yellows and oranges in the image. To bring out a little bit more detail on the van, let's make them a little darker. Depending on your photograph, you can play around with all of these sliders to darken or lighten different areas in your image and to differentiate between different hues. This added flexibility is where working digitally has its advantages over black and white film photography and traditional color filters, where you would not be able to effectively combine several filters or easily adjust the strength of the filter. Simply applying a color filter profile and playing around with a black and white mix is not usually enough to create a super cool finished look. You'll most likely need to do some fine tweaking with the basic panel and adjust the point curve to boost or squash certain tones in your image, just as you would edit any photograph, color, or black and white. What color filters you need to use and what further adjustments you'll need to make will vary hugely based on the photograph you are editing. But the logic behind it will be the same and based on the theory behind color filters and the effect you want to achieve. But let's quickly have a look at a few more examples and different filters and adjustments you can make to edit different kinds of photographs. 8. Tips for B&W Editing in Adobe LR: Now that we've covered the general technique for converting your images to black and white and editing them to replicate and enhance the effect of color filters, let's have a look at a few more different examples of using color filters and adjustments, which you can make to create different looks. Firstly, let's have a look at an example of a portrait where I've had to pay careful attention to the skin tones. To convert this portrait to black and white, I've applied an orange filter to lighten and smooth the skin tones ever so slightly, but keep the freckles which add character visible. I've turned the profiles amounts down so that this effect is not too strong. Plus, the orange filter also affects red colors. I've lowered the red a little in the black and white mix to darken the lips and avoid a slightly anemic look. I've also darkened the yellows, which is a hue in the fur, which allows me to frame the portrait better, but it does not affect any other areas in the image apart from making a tiny change to the hair. Portraits are the trickiest type of image to edit using color filters because special care and attention needs to be given to the skin tones. Unless you offer a deliberately high or lowkey log, you should avoid creating burnt-out faces or very dark ones. When working with portraits and color filters, you might have to work with makeup, which can potentially cause contrasting tones or merge with the tones created by the subject's clothing and accessories. As mentioned previously, the orange filter is a good starting point because it generally soften skin tones, reducing freckles and blemishes. Ultimately, you will need to decide how much detail and texture you want to retain. Keep the principles we've discussed in mind, but edit on a portrait to portrait basis. Next, let's have a look at how by imitating different filters. You can create very different looks with the same image. For example, here is a seascape photographed on a hot summers afternoon. To begin with, I've edited it using a red filter to increase the contrast and make it look right in summary. But if I apply a blue filter, you can see how it reduces the contrast instead. To intensify the haze and cold look, I can go to the black and white mix and lift the blues and aquas. This image is already looking very different, but let's go a step further by making the rocks darker to give this photograph a more sinister look and to further shift the focal point to the terrain and yacht here. To alter the look even further, I'm going to try changing the color temperature. Because I've applied a blue filter, making the image warmer darkens the image further and emphasizes its moody look. I can play around with the tint slider as well to bring back more details. There's a lot of room for experimentation when applying different filters to your images, and you can easily create very different looks. Apart from playing around with the black and white mix and point curve, changing the temperature and tint is a little trick which can help you quickly separate certain hues and lighten or darken the whole photograph. To demonstrate things further, here's an example of an image edited with the green filter, which helps lighten the greens and separate the hues a little, which brings out more details in the leaves. Whilst the green filter lifts the greens, it does not drastically darken the reds. After applying the green filter and playing around with its amount, if your image still requires adjustments to the red areas, you'll need to lower them in the black and white mix to darken them further. I'm going to make a few additional tweaks to the other colors here to lighten the greens and yellows and darken the blues. This photograph now has a nice range of tones. But to finalize the look, I'm going to make a few changes to the point curve and make this image look moodier with faded blacks and shadows, softer highlights, and a little darker and deeper mid tones. This adjustment adds more character and depth to the image. The magic of editing black and white photographs digitally is that you can effectively combine multiple filters and individually work with all of the separate hues to separate them from each other or to squash them together. For example, the power of editing aquas and blues independently of each other allows you to separate any water and sky in your photographs and create strong but smooth gradation of tones in the sky. Ultimately, when editing your digital photographs, you will need to look at what colors are featured in your image. Decide on the initial color profile preset and go from there, tweaking all the different tonal areas in your image. However, if you're working with a set of images to make your editing faster and more consistent, you can create presets based on your specific adjustments. I'll share a few quick tips for creating presets in the next lesson. 9. Creating Presets in Adobe LR: When working with sets of images, editing different images in a similar way and when working on multiple devices or sharing tasks with colleagues, you can speed up your workflow and create consistent looks by building and using your own black and white presets. To create a preset, start by selecting an image which contains the adjustments you want to use. Then go to the presets panel and click on the Create preset icon, and select ''Create Preset''. This will open the new development preset window where you can select which of the settings you have applied to your image will be included in your preset. For example, from this image I want to separately save the profile and black and white mix, but keep everything else unchecked. The great thing about Adobe Lightroom apps and Adobe Camera Raw is that your presets can contain any adjustments you want and you can apply multiple presets to the same image. For example, you can have separate presets for the black and white conversion which contain color filter profile settings and black and white mix. Some presets with different curve adjustments. Some presets to apply grain to your photographs, and maybe even some toning presets created using the color grading panel. When you are creating your presets think how you can make them as versatile as possible so they can easily be used to edit different images and split up the different aspects of the edit into different preset types. If you want you can play around with some of my presets which you can download in the Projects and Resources tab for this class. I have already created a new preset group and saved several presets containing different settings. I'll save this new preset in the same group and give it an understandable name. When ready to save the preset, click on the Create button, and then you'll be able to find your preset in the presets panel. To export your presets for sharing, selling, or using on a different computer, right-click on the preset group's name and select ''Export group''. This will allow you to export your presets and a zip archive in your desired location, which can then be imported into Lightroom via this button in the presets panel. You can create a lot of very different black and white looks using a combination of color filters, black and white mix adjustments and curves, so experiment with editing different types of photographs. Save presets based on different adjustments, and then play around with applying your presets to different images, and ultimately build a collection of presets to speed up your workflow and create exciting edits. 10. B&W Editing in Adobe PS: If you do not have a large number of photographs to edit and do not have access to Adobe Lightroom, you can convert your images into black and white and imitate the looks of various color filters using Adobe Photoshop. In Adobe Photoshop, there are several ways to properly convert and edit your black and white photographs. In this class, we'll focus on using Photoshop's adjustment layers and an alternative method using the Camera Raw Filter, which will give you more creative control and access to the same features and functionality as Adobe Lightroom app's. For the best results, when working with positive file formats like JPEG or TIFF. In Adobe Photoshop, you need to start with an image which has been correctly exposed or edited as naturally as possible. Most importantly, you should avoid images with overly processed colors, a lot of color adjustments, or certain process blocks because these will lack the required color gamut and information to successfully be edited in black and white. Creating black and white edits using Camera Raw Filter in Adobe Photoshop is essentially the same as creating black and white edit in Adobe Lightroom. I'm not going to go through the same process again, but just share a quick tip for using Camera Raw Filter as a part of your Photoshop workflow. To get the most out of Adobe Photoshop when creating your edits using Camera Raw Filter, you should have a nondestructive workflow. To establish a nondestructive workflow when editing images with the Camera Raw Filter, we need to convert the image layer into a smart object. Then select your smart object layer and add the Camera Raw Filter through the Filter menu. In the Camera Raw interface, make any desired changes using the color profiles and adjustment tools. These work the same way as an Adobe Lightroom app's. When you are happy with the changes you have made to your image, apply the changes and the Camera Raw Filter will be added as a smart filter to your image, which you can re-edit or discard at anytime. By working this way, you make your workflow more flexible and nondestructive. Meaning you can revisit the Camera Raw settings and play around with your images look whenever necessary. Keep in mind this nondestructive workflow. Now let's revert to the original state of the photograph and have a look at how we can imitate the look of color filters directly in Photoshop. If you have not got access to or do not want to work with Camera Raw Filter in Adobe Photoshop, then you'll need to imitate the look of color filters using the black and white adjustment layer. Go to the Create New Fill or adjustment layer button at the bottom of the Layers panel and select the black and white adjustment. This will add a new black and white adjustment layer to your document, and the Properties panel should pop up. If you cannot see the Properties panel for this new adjustment, simply double-click on the adjustment layer's thumbnail in the Layers panel. In the Properties panel, you'll find these color sliders for editing your image. They look similar to the sliders available in the black and white mix panel in Adobe Lightroom app's or Camera Raw Filter. There is, however, some subtle differences. Chiefly, the orange and purple sliders are missing and the aqua slider has been replaced with a cyan slider instead. In Adobe Photoshop, the color filters work directly with these sliders and can be found in the preset drop-down menu. Here you'll find a slightly different range of color filters, including yellow, standard red, high contrast red, green, standard blue, and high contrast blue filters. The effects these filters have on your image is similar, but not as refined as the look created by the profiles available in Adobe Lightroom and Camera Raw Filter. But the logic and what profile to use in particular situations is the same. For example, this image has a lot of sky which I want to darken. To do this, I'll start by trying out the yellow and red filters. As I add the red filter, you can see how the image's contrast has increased. But straightaway, you can also see this color banding in the sky. Let's try the yellow filter instead. This is better, but I still got some patches here. You might notice an increase in color banding and other graphic artifacts when working with positive image formats because these have been compressed and have limited color information available. Watch out for these issues when applying different presets and make any required adjustments to the sliders to eliminate these defects. Besides working with the sliders, you can also use this widget here, which is the same as in Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw, and drag it over an area in the image you want to lighten or darken. When working with your photographs in Photoshop, you'll need to play around with the color sliders and eyedropper widget to achieve your desired look and eliminate any color banding which might occur. Since working with the color sliders in Photoshop is the primary step in black and white conversion to further edit your image and create your desired look, you'll need to use additional adjustments. For example, I'm generally happy with the interpretation of colors in this image. The sky is nice and smooth, but it's not as dark as I would like it to be. After adjusting the color sliders to make further adjustments to the image's brightness and contrast, I'll add a new Curves adjustment layer and make sure that it is above the black and white adjustment layer. The first thing you'll want to do is recalculate the histogram so that it is more accurate, and then start adjusting the curve as required. This is now starting to look good, but it is perhaps a little too dark. However, to save time adjusting the curves further, I'm simply going to lower the opacity of the Curves adjustment layer to reduce its overall strength. This approach is faster and allows me more minute control over the effect this adjustment layer has on the photograph. When creating black and white edits in Adobe Photoshop, you'll most likely have to use additional adjustment layers to create your desired final look, and you'll need to play around with the sliders in the black and white adjustment panel instead of relying solely on the limited number of preexisting color filters. To save yourself some time and to be able to create a more consistent look across different photographs, you can create your own custom black and white adjustment presets. That's what we'll have a look at in the next part. 11. Creating B&W Presets in Adobe PS: Because there is only a limited number of color filter presets in Adobe Photoshop, you can create your own to be able to quickly replicate certain looks in future. To save your custom filter as a new preset, click on the drop-down menu here and select ''Save Black and White Preset''. By default, your presets will be saved in your library folder. But you can save them elsewhere, for example, on Creative Cloud, so they can be shared and accessed for multiple devices by you or your work colleagues. If you're using Adobe Photoshop as a part of your workflow, experiment with converting different images into black and white and creating different looks while saving your black and white presets in the process. Whilst we're on the subject of creating custom presets, you can also create presets from tinting your images with looks that mimic traditional tinting processes like sepia and selenium toning. To apply a color tint to your black and white image, in the black and white adjustments property window, click on the little tint checkbox here to apply a default sepia tint to your image. This feature effectively mimics the toning of a black and white print and a photographic darkroom. Except, because it's a digital darkroom, this tool is far more flexible and effective. Once applied, you can click on the tint color here and select your own custom color. Feel free to experiment. You can stick with traditional tints like sepia and selenium toning, or be more experimental and create mood specific color variance of your images. As with creating presets in Adobe Lightroom to have more flexibility whilst editing your work, it is best to save black and white conversion presets separately from any tinting presets, so you can easily mix and match them to create a tinting preset which won't affect the black and white conversion. Before you select your tint color, in the preset menu, select ''Default'' option here. Then select your desired color, and save your tinting preset. Then to apply both the color filter preset and the tinting preset, simply use two separate black and white adjustment layers, the bottom one for the black and white conversion, and the top one with the tint. I've shared some of my custom presets with you in this class's resources, so don't hesitate to download them. Load them into Adobe Photoshop via the menu here and check them out. That's it for the techniques replicating the effect of color filters in Adobe's Digital dark rooms. Next, let's wrap this class up with a few final thoughts. 12. Final Thoughts & Conclusion: Using color filters in black and white photography as they are technically intended or experimentally is a great way to inexpensively improve your photography and speed up your workflow. Whilst most of the color filters are designed for black and white photography, they can also be used when photographing or filming in color to add different atmospheric effects or tint images. However, if you shoot in color with a color filter, this does not mean that these photographs will convert well into black and white images later. This is because by shooting in color with a color filter, you are effectively limiting the color information recorded in the photograph. For example, a color photograph with a red cast will not convert into a contrasty black and white image. If you have some color filters, you can use them to shoot on black and white film to achieve the effects that we have discussed in this class or use them with color photography to tint your images whilst taking photographs but avoid mixing the two together. This brings us to the end of the class. I hope that you have enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to seeing your creative black and white photographs or edits. For your class project, there are two different directions that you can take, depending on whether you're working with film or digital photographs. If you are an avid film photographer, then I'd be really excited to see scanned versions of your photographs taken using color filters. When you share your film photographs, do not forget to clearly identify which filter you have used when taking each photograph. If you are a digital photographer, graphic designer, or image editor, for your class project, simply edit some preexisting color photographs, your own often stock to create different black and white looks. Experiment with using photos of different subject matter or photographic genres. For example, nature, landscape, portraits, architecture, and street photography and edit them in black and white with color filters and additional adjustments. Either way, be sure to post your project in the projects and resources tab for this class, and feel free to use the discussion board to share how you use color filters in your work. If you found this class useful, please leave a review, and do not hesitate to follow us in Skillshare so you can be the first to find out about our new classes, news, and updates. If you're looking for more photography classes, don't hesitate to check out our classes: the camera's journey through time, a brief history of photography, and beginner's guide to retouching old photographs in Adobe Photoshop. I'll take you through everything you need to know about how to bring new life to your old photographs. Don't hesitate to check out our class mastering duotones in Adobe Photoshop. To level up your toning skills, explore different approaches to combining colors to create different moods, learn how to create toning actions in Adobe Photoshop to speed up your workflow, and add another creative technique to your arsenal. Thank you for joining me in this class, and I hope to see you in our other classes. [MUSIC]