Mono Tutorial, The Basics

Here are some very famous Ansel Adams:

A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.

Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.

Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment.

Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.

The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance.

We must remember that a photograph can hold just as much as we put into it, and no one has ever approached the full possibilities of the medium.

Right then here is a look at the very basics of colour to mono......

When I first started to work with mono i was as frustrated as most others as to why they just didn’t look right.

I was also told at the time of learning that my screen wasn’t calibrated, so at fist I borrowed one from a fellow togger and was instantly taken back as to just how far off the colours and contrast were.

I have got a lot of me learning form a good friend of mine Martin Henson whom i aspire too and always will, I’m probably one of the lucky ones in that respect.

OK, as you can see I had to purchase and item to work with and i thought these yummy Jelly Baby’s would work just fine because of the colours,(and taste...!!)

The first edit as you can see is just a straight forward colour edit with a bit more saturation to make the colours just that bit stronger to allow the tool I’ve used to show the mono effect.

First off, as most or some people know will use the CHANNEL MIXER, in this case I used Photoshop CS4....and all you do is make sure that the monochrome box at the bottom left is ticked, but all you’ll get is simply a GREYSCALE edit which may look drab, flat and toneless.....so what I have done to give you a better understanding of what each colour filter does to an image and also what each filter colour does to its own colour, EG what RED does to reds....

The 1st prime colour is BLUE which does and can make any type of image look very dark...

The 2nd prime colour is which at times can be used as a base tone, we’ll come back to that at another time, but the GREEN filter will make greens go lighter but can also give decent balanced tones, i use the green filter a lot.

The 3^rd prime colour is ORANGE which forces the reds, oranges and yellows go lighter. Orange is best used for skies which will help darken blue and make the clouds stand out more and a layer mask will then be used allowing you to paint only the sky back if you wish?

The 4^th prime colour is RED and works much the same as orange but will darken the blue in skies more making for a more dramatic effect, again a layer mask is used same as above?

The 5^th prime colour is YELLOW and seems to be the best option for more balanced tones in all the colours. While it has made the yellows lighter it has not made the oranges and reds go too light, making them stand apart in separate tones..

I hope this helps to you a bit more understanding of what each prime colour does to other prime colours.

I will be working on another tutorial shortly with a Landscape shot using layer masks to create a good balanced tonal image.