Maximally Entangled Life

I turned most of the photos I took in Calcutta to B&W because b&w suits well for street photography. Also black and white has the capability of  turning any drab photo into a masterpiece. Here are the steps to do it in Photoshop.

First lets start with the original and the transformation.

Original Picture:Victoria Memorial Calcutta

Post Processing: Black and White

1) Open the original photo in Photoshop. Go to adjustments and desaturate the image first.

After Desaturating

As you can see it just looks drab and so its not enough. People think turning on the black and white mode of the camera also would produce an amazing black and white photo, but you will end up with something like this.

2) Open curves. Adjust it. The curve should look like an S . you can open Curves by pressing Ctrl+M.

Adjusting Curves

As you can see the picture is starting to pop.  The curves adjustment is enough to make you pics pop.

3).  If you want more, you can play with the Shadow/Highlights and then your picture would be complete.

Final HDR from 1 Single JPEG

Sometimes you are stuck with a single JPEG file and regret not taking several RAW’s to make an HDR. All hope if not lost, because if you play around with a bit of Photoshop and Photomatix, you can make a HDR like looking photo in no time at all. Of course it wont have really much of a dynamic range because the information is not truly there.

Step 1. Open the original file in Photoshop.

Original Image

As you can see its a really dull image taken from my camera from the car. Its a single JPEG with nothing special work done on it.

Step 2. Play with the curves to create an over exposed and an under exposed shot.

Adjusting Curves to create underexposure

Once you have do this, you shall have an underexposed and overexposed pic which look somewhat like this.

Overexposed Shot

Underexposed

Step 3. Open the 3 different exposures using photomatix, play with the tonal ranges and voila you’ll get your fake HDR.