Today’s cameras make it easy to capture your images just the way you want to see them. Almost every camera has a handful of image capture modes and they offer everything from straight color to black& white, posterization or blue-tone and every stop in between. Faced with so many options how does a photographer make a good choice?
First let’s look at how our cameras handle color imaging. Every consumer digital camera made takes a color image, there are no exceptions. This is physical attribute of the camera’s image sensor. On the sensor, each tiny pixel sits behind a colored filter – red, green or blue. The image captured must pass through these filters or there is no picture at all.
After capturing this color image the camera’s computer goes to work smoothing out the pixels, adjusting out color cast caused by ambient light, and generally spiffing up the sensor data in a number of ways. It is during this computerized process that the settings we make on the camera are applied to the captured image.
If we have chosen to capture our images in color they are saved directly to the memory card, however if we chose black & white instead the camera’s computer removes color from the file and we have a saved B&W image. In fact, every selection we can make on our camera to alter the image color is applied by camera’s little brain after the image has been processed into full, true color. You chose Sepia mode? The camera subtracts enough red, green and blue to equal sepia brown. The idea of an image with really strong colors trips your trigger? The camera adjusts the color upward past 100% to achieve amped up color.
So the camera captures a full color image and then happily sets about removing or adding color per our instructions. Yet the computer inside of a camera for all of its power has no taste or judgment. What if the results look really bad? You were aiming for an Ansel Adams quality black and white but instead wound up with a picture that is gray and muddy looking. Not good at all.
This brings us to the real problem of using the camera’s built-in picture color modes. When the camera captures images in JPG, color changes can’t be undone if perhaps you don’t like the results. Once the camera’s computer throws out the color information there is no “un-do” button that will recolor your JPG image file. You’re stuck with a poor image.
DSLR shooters and a very few compact camera owners have the option to capture images in RAW format which does permit rolling back a color change. However the camera must be set to save RAW images or you’re shooting JPG images just like any point and shoot photographer.
It’s my opinion that the best way to create color changes in an image is to do it outside of the camera on your computer. Since you are in control of the process you can decide if you like the results before saving the file and committing. Most cameras come with software that permits the photographer to make these changes as easily as with one mouse click. Software that allows more control will usually use sliders instead of buttons so that there is finer control of the effect.
No matter the software used I strongly suggest that as soon as the image is opened a “Save As” command needs to be done to give the file another name. This way the photographer will always have the original image to go back to if they get lost in the process and mess up.
In conclusion we suggest that the photographer should capture images in full color. If color or black & white effects are desired, make those changes through software on a computer rather than inside the camera. If the image is manipulated by the camera there is no un-doing the process. A computer will offer better control, a better view of the process and provide ability to revert back to the original image.
