If you are going to spend $5 (about £3.50), what can you get for your money? A Big Mac meal perhaps? A pint of beer? Maybe a magazine? The best £3.50 I have spent in a long time is a new E-book by Piet Van den Eynde. It is called THE POWER OF BLACK & WHITE In Adobe Lightroom & Beyond, A Master Class. Published by Craft & Vision (LINK). Piet is an Adobe Photoshop & Lightroom Trainer. Author of ‘Adobe Lightroom 2 Ontmaskerd’ & ‘Adobe Lightroom 3 Ontmaskerd’, Author of different articles on digital photography for ‘De Fotograaf’ & ‘Shoot’. Training & Workshops on digital photography & post-processing. He specialises in Photographic software and post processing and is an outstanding photographer in his own right.

It is a great course in creating black and white images in Adobe Lightroom. You may think that creating a black and white image is just one click away; you would be wrong in thinking that. Proper black and white images require a systematic and knowledgeable approach to colour conversion and post-production editing.

Introduction

The book starts off by introducing what black and white is, the do’s and don’t when converting and an explanation of the basics of black and white. The sections on the controls within the Lightroom panel is in depth and I found to be very informative and easy to follow.

Once the control panel is explained in detail the book moves on to case studies/tutorials, where Piet shows how he has converted a colour images to black and white and the problems encountered whilst doing so. The book features 3 detailed case studies, which explain in detail how the conversion was finally obtained . Raw files are not included for download so you can follow these case studies due to Bandwidth issues.

The book continues with the pros and cons of using presets with tips to get the best out of presets. The whole book is filled with tips as you read through it.

The next chapter is quite in-depth and deals with Dodging and Burning with Graduated Filters and the Adjustment Brush.  Again in this chapter there are plenty of screenshots to show what sliders and controls to use and each explanation is in depth and easy to understand and follow.

The last section of the book goes into what plug-ins are available for the conversion from colour to black and white. These are Alien Skin (LINK) and Nik Software Silver Effex Pro (LINK). I loved this section as I am a big fan of Nik Software, however after reading the previous chapters several times, I think I will be doing a lot of my conversion within Lightroom, thanks to Piet. As with the previous topics there are plenty of screenshots and explanations on how to get the best from these plug-ins when using them on your conversions.

Piet moves onto High Dynamic Range (HDR) and black and white in the last section covering plug-ins such as Photomatix Pro and Nik Effex HDR Pro. All with easy to understand screenshots and explanations that make it so easy to read. If you are into a little bit of HDR (Aren’t we all?) then you will love this section.

The book finishes off with a few pages on The Finishing Touches including, Tinting and Toning, Tinting with the Split Tone Panel, Selective Colouring using the HSL Panel, Selective Colouring Using Adjustment Brushes and Hand Tinting a Photograph. The very last chapter covers printing your images and even in this day and age of digital, it is always nice to have a final print of your work to hang up or even display.

In the last few months I have been channeling my energy into Street-Photography. Photography is a hobby I love, and I have fallen totally head over heels with street. I am going to write another post on black and white verses colour so I won’t go any further right now.

I have read this book more than a few times in just the three days since I downloaded it. If you like black and white and want to get more from your colour conversions, then this is definitely the book for you. My advice (and this is not a plug or ad) is, go and download it now, for $5 you will be rewarded with a fountain of knowledge and if you take Piet’s advice, there is no doubt that your black and white shots will become better and more professional.

The one thing I would say to the publishers is can you please include a linkable contents page, so it is possible to jump to a particular chapter or subject for easy reference. In addition an index page would also be useful.

For more details please refer to: -

craft&vision

Pixelated Image Communications Inc.

29115 RPO South Granville Post Vancouver, BC V6J 0A6 Canada

info@craftandvision.com CraftAndVision.com