This exercise required me to compose a simple still-life arrangement which included the following colours: Red, Yellow, Blue and Green. The original colour image was then converted into a number of black and white versions using different filter presets in Adobe Lightroom 5. The idea behind the exercise is to demonstrate how coloured filters allow certain colours to pass through, while blocking others. The original image below in colour is a shot void of any editing.
As shot: f8 1/45 ISO 200
The image below was converted using Adobe Lightroom 5’s default black and white settings, with no other adjustments.
Default conversion
The next image was converted to black and white using the red filter preset in Lightroom 5. No other adjustments were made. The filter preset had the effect of brightening the red pepper as expected, but all the other colours were brightened too. The yellow lemon was brightened to such an extent that the highlights are heavily clipping on the right of the histogram.
Red filter preset only
In the image below, I converted to black and white using the same red filter preset as above. However, in order to find a more appealing balance to the image, I adjusted the HLS (Hue, Luminance and Saturation) sliders as follows: yellow -70%, green -20% and blue -10%.
Red filter manual adjustments
The yellow filter preset was used in the next image. The blue background was darkened slightly while the other colours were brightened to almost the same degree as the red filter preset, with the exception of the yellow lemon staying just inside the clipping range on the right side of the histogram
Yellow filter preset only
The green filter preset was used in the image below, no other adjustments were carried out. The green limes were brightened slightly, along with the yellow lemon. In the case of blue background and red pepper, the tones were held close to the levels of the original black and white conversion.
Green filter
In the final image, the blue filter preset was used with the effect of brightening the blue background and holding back and darkening the other three colours. This was the only filter to really hold back yellow, and it also the most dramatic.
Blue Filter
This was an interesting exercise and should prove beneficial when converting future images to black and white.
Tim's Learning Log 