@Loganlamar said:
If the color contributes or enhances the feeling I want to convey with the photo, I’ll keep it… If, however, the use of color detracts or distracts from the feeling I want to convey with the image, I’ll convert it to black and white… It all depends on what you’re trying to convey.
Absolutely. This is probably the most important thing to keep in mind. What do you want your picture to convey? Think about it, and keep it in mind as you edit.
@hayhand02 wrote:
Sometimes just B&W might look best, but if it looks “boring” you can try picking one color of your subject to showcase.
So, to put the two together in an example:
Sometimes you can do the reverse of @hayhand02’s trick as well, to achieve a pleasing effect.
This cat was not really very black, being illuminated by a cloudy sky, and the grass wasn’t very green, being early spring. (pic 1)
But by the time I had saturated the colours enough to make the grass as green as I wanted it to look, the cat was all shades of eerie blue and orange, having been illuminated by a cloudy sky. (pic 2)
Converting the darkest colours to B&W really improved this shot a lot, even though the cat never was that black to begin with. (pic 3)
This isn’t the best example of good photography (notice the leaf in the top right corner that mysteriously turned greyscale), but it illustrates the point.
