> 4 minute read

Perfecting Black & White in Post-Production

To get the most control over your black & white images, there’s no substitute for taking a RAW file into software and carrying out every step of the process yourself. Here’s how it’s done using Capture One.

While converting to black & white in post-production is undeniably a more involved and time-consuming process, it does offer a huge degree of creative control over things like brightness, contrast, and the shade of grey produced by the different colours in the original image. Of course, you can do all of this using your X Series camera’s controls, but being able sit at a big screen and make careful adjustments gives you more creative control. And if you’ve photographed RAW files, you can get a superb-quality result.

FUJIFILM RAW files can be processed (and made black & white) with lots of applications. Let’s look at one of them: Capture One, which is freely available in the form of Capture One Express for FUJIFILM from the Capture One website.

Black & White in Capture One

There are many great tools in Capture One for retouching photos, and these are grouped into tabs, which you’ll find by default on the left-hand side of the screen. You can customise tabs so they only contain the tools you want, but the way that tabs are populated by default means we need to swap between the Color and Exposure tabs when we create black & white pictures. Take a moment to familiarise yourself with where these are.

In the Color tab, you’ll find the Black & White tool. Tick the Enable Black & White box and you’ll see the image go monochrome.

You’ll notice the coloured sliders underneath the tick box. These determine the brightness of the shades of grey formed by the colours in the picture. For instance, if you want to darken the grey formed by a blue sky in order to make the clouds stand out better, then drag the blue slider to the left to darken it. Want to emphasise the freckles on a model’s face? Try dragging the red slider to the left.

It’s important to use the other tools in the Exposure tab, too. Black & white images often need a little more contrast, and you can do this either by simply sliding the contrast slider to the right, or by modifying the Curves into a slight S-shape.

There are other tools that can help give your black & white pictures the kind of gritty analog feeling that can look so good. Try adding some film-like grain from using the controls in the Film Grain tab – select Silver Rich from the drop-down menu to mimic the look and feel of black & white film. You can also apply a little vignette if you think the image would benefit from this.

Film Simulation Modes

If you’re a fan of the look that our Film Simulation modes give you, then there’s no need to miss out on these just because you’re converting to black & white in post-production. From the Color tab, you can select a Film Simulation mode from the Base Settings drop-down menu – they’re all built in to every RAW file you shoot, including MONOCHROME and ACROS, with the R, Ye, and G variants, too.

After you’ve selected the Film Simulation mode you want, you can still go back to the Exposure tab and adjust contrast, brightness, curves etc as much as you like for the perfect black & white result.

Your Next Steps

• CHALLENGE Photograph a scene in colour using a RAW file and process it into black & white using Capture One Express for FUJIFILM. Try to come up with three different ‘recipes’ that give three different looks and post them all to social media using the hashtags #learnwithfujifilm and #CaptureOne. You can also submit your work here for a chance to be featured on our social media channels.
• LEARN Download our booklet See the World in Black and White with FUJIFILM X Series