Playing with 1-bit binary images

One of my very first computers was an Atari 800 XL way back in the 80's. It had a whooping 64K of RAM and no hard disk drive. The first storage gadget I had was a cassette drive, which I later upgraded to a 5.25 floppy disk drive. Or more accurately, my dad upgraded for me. I loved it. It was great.

Of course, there was no Aperture and no Photoshop back then. It was practically impossible to import a photograph into this machine, and the printers back then sucked. They were called dot-matrix printers and the cool ones had a feature that was called NLQ for "near-letter-quality". Imagine what it looked like!

Anyway, the reason for getting into this is not to show everyone how old I am. It's because even back then I was playing around with photography on top of being a bit of a geek. (I actually found hundreds of old films and slides that I sent out to be scanned. But I digress.) The reason for this explanation is that the combination of this technology meant that if you wanted to print anything that was even remotely creative, you had 2 options. You could either push the technology to the extreme and end up with something extremely pixelated that looked terrible, or you could go extremely basic and create and print a 1-bit image.

I chose to go for the second one.

A 1-bit image, also called a binary image, is

"a digital image that has only two possible values for each pixel. Typically the two colors used for a binary image are black and white though any two colors can be used. The color used for the object(s) in the image is the foreground color while the rest of the image is the background color." Source: Wikipedia.

Which really means you have the paper (white) and the ink (black)... and you have to make it work with that.

I really like the look of binary images from photographs. Of course, it doesn't work with all photographs, but when it does it's amazing.

I found a very cool application for the Mac that automatically does this called HyperDither, and I've been playing with it. I'll write a proper review at some point, but I just wanted to share this and post a few photos I converted today using this app. It's free and it's pretty cool.

Click on the photos for a larger view. They're all from the People of the Globe project.

What do you think?

How to convert to black-and-white in Photoshop 7, CS, CS2 Part 2 (Channel Mixer Layer)

NOTE: This was originally posted on shutterstation.com, but since decommissioning that site I've pulled some of the articles here so they don't get lost.

In Part 1 of this series I showed you how to convert a color photograph to black-and-white using Photoshop CS3 or CS4 using a Black & White Adjustment Layer, but what if you have an older version of Photoshop? Well, there are a few options, but the one I used the most often is using the Channel Mixer, which we'll discuss today. It's also arguably the easiest way to convert to black-and-white that gives you some control over the tonal values. Here's how to do it using Photoshop CS2 as an example, but it works the same way with older versions:

• Start with the color image and add a Channel Mixer Layer. You can do it by either going to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Channel Mixer, or by clicking in the New Adjustment Layer icon in the Layers pallete (see screenshot below).
• The Channel Mixer adjustment layer option dialog box will open up. To turn the photograph into black-and-white just ensure you tick the Monochrome checkbox at the bottom of the dialog box. From here, you can adjust the Red, Green and Blue channels independently until you get the effect you want.

Remember that you can use negative numbers as well as positive. In general, you should aim for the sum total of the Red, Green, and Blue channels to equal 100% unless you're after a specific look. Going over 100% will cause additional tone adjustments that can blow out hightlights, clog up shadows, and create muddy midtones. Give it a try for yourself, the best way to learn is to experiment.

How to convert to black-and-white in Photoshop CS3 Part 1 (Black and White Adjustment Layer)

There are many ways of converting a color photograph into black-and-white in post-production. The quick and easy way is to just convert to grayscale or desaturate completely the image, but these are in almost every situation, your worst possible option as you have absolutely no control. As an introduction, I suggest you go over our Think About Color post before continuing.

If you're using Photoshop CS3, a good way of converting a photograph to black-and-white is to use the Black and White adjustment layer. This will give you a great deal of control over how different colors are rendered in a grayscale image. Take the photograph below for example. It's not a great shot, but it'll serve for the exercise as it has clear areas of orange, green, blue, and red.

If you just go to Image>Mode>Greyscale, you'll turn it into a black-and-white shot, but you'll get the photograph next to it as a result. Not terrible, but not great by any stretch of the imagination. All the colors turned into a similar shade of gray. There isn't a lot of contrast really. Look at what used to be a green and orange wall on the left. In the color version there's a nice contrast between the 2 colors, but in the black-and-white they look almost the same.

How to improve it and have more control? Use the Black and White adjustment layer! Here's how:

• Start with the color image and add a Black and White adjustment layer. You can do it by either going to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Black and White... or by clicking in the New Adjustment Layer icon in the Layers palette (screenshot below)

• The Black and White adjustment layer will open up. Here you can either play with the presets, which try to mimic what color filters did in the film days, or just play with the sliders to get the look you want.

In this example, I chose the Green Filter. If you look at the sliders you'll notice that it boosts the Yellows, Greens, Reds and Cyans. That means it will lighten the areas in the photograph that have those colors.

In simple terms, the way the sliders work is this:

1. If you pull it to the left (less than 0%) the corresponding color will become a darker shade of grey.
2. If you push it to the right (values over 0%) the corresponding color will become a lighter shade of grey.

That's really all there is to it. Just play around with the sliders until you get the photograph to where you want it.

Quick tip: if you hover over the photograph you'll see the cursor turns into an eyedropper. If you click you'll see one of the colors in the layer window flash. That's the key slider that will affect that area.

A few different examples using the above photograph:

Red Filter

Green Filter

Custom Filter

As you can see, you have much more control over what your photograph will look like in black-and-white if you can control how each color is going to be interpreted in grayscale. Hopefully you'll find it useful.

I'll go over other methods in future posts.

Shooting in black-and-white mode

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Black & White photography tip: Think about color!

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Don't be afraid of high ISO. Embrace the grain

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New series on Black and White photography

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