Many digital cameras don’t do black and white natively. Those that do shoot in black and white are actually shooting in color and converting in-camera - and they usually do a less than adequate job of it.

Something happened around the late 1990’s that saw a dramatic decrease in the number of black and white pictures being published. Though there were still a good number monochrome pictures being produced, it suddenly became more trendy for commercial photography and photojournalism to be shot in bright color.

I think with the loss of film, many of us started losing our taste for black and white images. Maybe that’s because it’s trickier to get a good looking black and white image now, as the one-stop “convert to black and white” button in cameras rarely do a stellar job.

Though black and white is still a very popular way of finishing a picture, within the realm of digital photography it’s more realistic to shoot in color and convert the picture in post-processing after the fact. This can be done differently in different software, but we’ll approach the Photoshop and the Lightroom method. Any application that gives you control over color channels and a conversion tool will allow you to get similar results, though. » MORE

Digital photography has certainly revolutionized a lot of the typical (read: film) photography workflow, but certain questions keep popping up. I’m often asked by photographers what the best method is for shooting in black and white.

While some cameras do have a black and white conversion mode, allowing you to shoot that way in-camera, it’s usually not the best choice. First of all - who knows what pictures you want in B&W and which you want in color at the time you shoot? Typically (or ideally) you want to make that decision after the fact, when you’ve had time to mentally process the image. Second, the conversion in-camera is essentially just a desaturation of the image, which is not the best way to get a good quality monochrome image. It will remove all the color, but those “greys” that result from desaturating usually have a lack of contrast or tonal panache.

Getting great black and whites is a matter of some subtle manipulation, and Adobe Lightroom is one of the best (and most straight forward) pieces of software with which to achieve this. I just love Lightroom.

Martin Evening is a studio and fashion photographer who works closely with Adobe, and over at the Lightroom News blog he explains (in video) how to best convert a color image to black and white. Check it out!