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The Magic of Black and White

Part III - Nine Photos

Andrew S. Gibson

Part three of Andrew S. Gibson’s, The Magic of Black and White series will help you take your Black & White photography to new levels and explore new ways of expressing yourself in this elegant medium! The Magic of Black & White – Part III, Nine Photos guides you through nine of his gorgeous black & white images with the goal of teaching more advanced techniques to give your images more subtlety and power. Learn more.

Clearly taught in Photoshop, and 5 of the lessons in Photoshop Elements, Andrew walks through Toning, Split Toning, Exposure Blending, Textures, and the creation of Diptyches and Triptyches, all without losing sight of the idea that one’s work should be driven by vision. Andrew teaches his techniques with the goal of creating photographs that honour both the Artist’s need for expression and the Geek’s need for excellence of craft. And all that without getting mired down – the examples and the illustrations Andrew provides compliment his clear teaching style and make this book a pleasure to read.

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Reviews and Comments

  1. The black and white series is among my favorite e-books at Craft & Vision. I was shocked and surprised to see Volume 3 had been released and it doesn’t disappoint! If you’ve been curious about shooting black and white, I highly suggest picking up all three volumes.

  3. I enjoyed part three of The Magic of Black and White. I have seen the exposure blending approch used before in photos, but with HDR becoming such a craze had forgotten about this much simpler (for me) process to actually get across in a frame accurately what I am seeing without becoming a little overdone, which is very easy with HDR to do. While the techniques are not “new” so to speak, I think that this is a great reminder, and a good tool for those who may be new to the process.

  4. The Magic black and white book reviewing by the most techniques and guide for beginner and higher people in blog site.

  5. First off, I’m a fan. I dig what David and the team have done and have bought quite a few of the books offered here which includes all the Magic of Black and White ebooks. I find that #3 though offers nothing new in the way of post processiang techniques, especially when they could all be found online. The Craft & Vision vision is “improve your craft, buy less gear”, maybe on this occasion we should listen to them.

  6. The third in this black and white series of books by Andrew S Gibson is entitled “the magic of black and white – part III – nine photos.” This book takes un to the more advance, and more subtle techniques used by Andrew to craft his vision of the photos he has captured. He shares with us nine photos and the process he used to take them from basic black and white conversion and toning to the full and complete work of art.

    There is nothing that is rocket science here, but with the topics of Toning, Split Toning, Exposure Blending, Textures, and the creation of Diptyches and Triptyches covered, this book is packed with content and inspiration. There is enough art presented to put this book on your coffee table, but also enough nerd speak to keep it with your photoshop books. The author navigates this fine line with skill.

    In the end, this third book is my favorite of the three, but that is only after reading all of them. I’m not sure this by itself will leave each reader with the same feeling, so be sure you read them all as parts one, two and three of the same larger book.

    all three of these books the author shares with us the EXIF information on the photos presented, so be sure to take with you the knowledge you gain from these series of books the next time you are out making photos.

  7. Nine short tutorials packaged into a single ebook. Lessons 1-3 are on toning. Useful, if you want to tone your images “by hand” via Curves / Color Balance. If you use Silver Efex or Exporure plugins, you can do the same with different tools. Lessons 4-5 are on exposure blending – simple and basic information. Lesson 6 – Brush marks, this was a new concept to me, which can be applied instead of texturing your image. Interesting. Lessons 7-8 – Gaussian Blur / Orthon Effect – if it is news to you, quite interesting. Lessons 9 – Diptyches and Triptyches – added to fill in the space, at least that is my belief. Overall, good ebook for begginers, and probably not much value for intermediate photogs and the concepts are pretty basic.

  8. While reading, I found myself wanting to jump to photoshop to experiment with my own images. Especially liked his diptychs and triptychs and how he treated the photos together as one by re adjusting the tones.
    This book is for the photographer who is serious about black and white imaging and who understands the basics. There is no filler, just great technique with good screen shots.

  9. This e-book describes some advanced techniques to improve your black and white images. Nine images are used as examples, with 36 pages of detailed explanation, how the final effect was achieved. The photographs are first presented as w double page spread, so you can fully enjoy the detail. Then the post-processing is described. The steps are not time extensive, and in just few minutes you can give your black and white image a completely different feel.
    (This is just a fragment of the review I wrote on my blog. You can read it here: http://tinyurl.com/2vrpsto)

  10. While the eBook is called “The Magic of Black and White”, photographers who work in color will also benefit from it, particularly the opening pages. Gibson starts off with an exercise that is useful for photographers of all mediums and moves on to discuss what he calls “setting a brief”. If you adopt a similar exercise and approach to your photography, you may extra emotion and feeling being injected into your work.

    The eBook takes you through the processing side of the creation of nine photographs, covering toning, exposure blending, triptychs and more.

  11. The book’s main topic provides a discussion on the use of Photoshop in helping you to excel in producing memorable B&W images. Some Photoshop Elements tips are included as well. I would have liked a section that also focused on using Lightroom as well since that tool is the standard that many new digital photographers use today and commonly the only tool they care to learn. But perhaps that is a lesson here, Photoshop is still relevant and Andrew covers the following techniques in detail:

    Raw Conversion
    B&W Conversion
    Split Blue and Copper Toning using Color Balance
    Exposure Blending in RAW
    More Exposure Blending with RAW
    Brush Marks
    Gaussian Blur
    Orton Effect
    Diptyches & Triptyches

    The tool you happen to use may not be Photoshop and it should be said that no matter what tool you use as a photographer, it is the technique that really matters and I imagine with a little effort, these techniques can be applied using Lightroom or whatever your flavor of tool happens to be

  12. Some strong solid advice for post processing techniques. This book is much more then basic adjustments and describes some interesting concepts. If you like post work, I feel this book has good value.