Different perception of monochrome and colour

Those picture on your site - the B&W ones just seem to be desaturated colour pics? IMO there's a massive difference between a 'black and white' and a desaturated colour pic.

None of the B&W pictures have any punch. And they all look a bit flat, when clearly given the subject matter in most of them they really should be cracking shots in B&W.

They could be reprocessed to give them more sharpness and clarity, which would make a stronger arguemtn for the B&W vs colour thing.

Here is a very quick and dodgy B&W of the face... what do you think?

face.jpg
 
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whitecrook said:
Those picture on your site - the B&W ones just seem to be desaturated colour pics? IMO there's a massive difference between a 'black and white' and a desaturated colour pic.

None of the B&W pictures have any punch. And they all look a bit flat, when clearly given the subject matter in most of them they really should be cracking shots in B&W.

They could be reprocessed to give them more sharpness and clarity, which would make a stronger arguemtn for the B&W vs colour thing.
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I think after reading the article the idea of the images was to provide an identical version of the image. It's not comparing black and white styles to colour images, but how the eyes treat different images. More specifically how some images would benefit from no saturation because textures and extra tonal information could be drawn from it by the eyes becuase of the way cones and rods work and how the opposite applies too.

Nice idea, very interesting thoughts/proposals too...
 
whitecrook said:
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As above, I think you're kind of missing the point. There's no point comparing a colour image to a heavily processed B&W, in the same way there's no point comparing it to an HDR. The only way you're going to be able to make a comparison of shadows and texture is to compare like for like.
 
Maybe I've unintentionally 'proved' his point? i.e. because in the grey pictures there is a lack of info hitting my eyes (i.e. no 'cone data') . The rods are now claiming to to my brain that the picture looks dull and lacking clarity/contrast. By changing the data in the picture to be more stimulating to the rods, the picture looks more interesting to the brain.

A colour image and a de sat are not the same either, so even comparing them doesn't make too much sense . The colour image provides much more info than the de sat. If you take colour away, it's not 'just' the colour that is lost from the image.

Also, because of that there is the question of 'how' to desaturate the image. Given we can see more detail in shadows than highlights for example, is it a linear desat or a logarithmic or some other method etc.
 
I think subject matter comes into it an awful lot, simply taking a B&W shot does not make it any better than it would be in colour, those samples shown aren't enhanced in anyway being B&W in my eyes, due to the fact they are uninteresting subjects for me.

Understanding how the eye works is fine but to me what makes a photograph is how the brain relates to the subject matter, for example the union jack skate looks better in colour as those colours are familiar and trigger memories etc.

I do agree some photos work better in B&W but I don't think its down to the eyes physical capabilities alone.
 
The B/W images are indeed very deliberately simply a pure desaturation of the colour image as I felt that pushing the B/W processing further would be an unfair comparison.

The union jack boots are an extreme example. The colour image is all about the red, white and blue shouting at you. The monochome is about the texture of the simulated leather.

Having had another day to think about it, I think that what I am trying to say is:

I think that as an image is desaturated, the perceived contrast increases.

I wonder if this could be tested?

Andrew
 
There are indeed contrast tests available, which gauge ones ability to perceive contrast by viewing a scale similar to a character size chart to determine eye quality.

But simply desaturating an image to me does not increase the contrast as a general rule, the guys in blue tshirts has much more contrast in the colour version in my eyes for example.

However I do find that with some heavy processing B&W is very striking and gives an image an emotion than cannot be portrayed in colour so I definately think your onto something on how the brain interprets B&W.
 
Colour content makes such an enormous difference to the perceived contrast that simply de-saturating a colour image is never going to give your eye the information it needs to find the image interesting. Nor is it going to increase the contrast.

I've studied similar concepts at Uni. That was more to do with TV images than pure photography, but the principles remain the same. The perception of colour through black and white is a very interesting topic.

Black and White is basically like compression. You lose info, reducing bandwidth. Reducing a pixels RGB values into a single Luminance value. The method by which you do this is very important. It is essential that the scene is carefully assessed to balance the colour information properly so that they can be assumed by the eye even in a monochrome image.

So once you've desaturated you need to look at your image, adjusting contrast, black levels and also the values on each colour in the mix for B&W.

I might write some kind of brief investigation into this at some point in the next couple of weeks...
 
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