Black & White Photography: Using Colour Filters to Enhance Your Film & Digital Images

Colour filters and the science behind them are an essential part of black & white photography, both when shooting with photographic film or creating digital edits in programs like Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop! In this course, you'll learn how you can enhance your black & white photography by using colour filters, whether physical or digital, in your workflow. 

Colour filters come in a range of different hues, and knowing what filter to use in which situation, or what filter to use when dealing with a tricky image edit on the computer afterwards will:

• speed up your workflow,
• drastically improve the quality of your photographs,
• and allow you to create a more desirable look.

This course is designed for digital photographers, media editors, content creators and graphic designers who want to create exciting and original black and white edits, and traditional film photographers who want to get the most out of their photography when shooting with 35mm and medium format black and white films.

In this course, we are going to dive into the world of using colour filters in black & white photography, both when shooting on film and by using the tools available in Adobe’s digital darkrooms, and we will:

• discuss why black and white photography is still important today;
• look into the theory behind black and white film photography and using physical colour filters when shooting on film;
• explore how colour filters can be used to improve the quality of your black and white photographs or image edits;
• run through each of the colour filters and how they can be used;
• look into how to replicate the effect of colour filters digitally and enhance your black and white photographs in Adobe Lightroom or Lightroom Classic, Adobe Camera Raw or Adobe Photoshop.
• explore a few quick tips for creating versatile presets for editing your images in Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop.

This course is for intermediate to advanced level students, and to get the most out of this course you will need to have a good understanding of photography’s terminology, techniques and processes and have some experience with editing photographs in Adobe Lightroom or Lightroom Classic, Adobe Camera Raw or Adobe Photoshop, and using basic tools for adjusting exposure and contrast, as well as using Curves.

For the best experience possible you’ll need a Creative Cloud version of Adobe Lightroom or Lightroom Classic, Adobe Camera Raw and/or Adobe Photoshop.

What Students Say About This Course:

"So much great information about the different color filters, because I always use greyscale with flat results and using colors makes more sense. Love that Dominic takes the time to explain the why behind the how." — Floor G.

"This course gave a behind the scenes into the creation of black and white photos. The instructor was very knowledgeable about the subject and was able to show — with examples — how the different filters create different b/w photos. Recommend for anyone interested in black and white or timeless photography — or if you’re just curious about filters." — Daniel N.

"This tutorial was excellent. Everything you need is here. Straight to the point with no waffle. Very enjoyable." — Terry C.

FAQs

I don't have any physical colour filters, will I benefit from this course?

If you shoot on film, what you will learn in this course will help inform your decisions regarding what filters you might want to purchase to enhance your film photography. If you shoot digitally, you'll learn the theory behind using colour filters and techniques for imitating their effects digitally.

Will I need physical colour filters if I shoot digitally?

No, you'll only need to use physical colour filters when shooting on black & white film. If you are going to convert your colour photographs to black & white digitally, you won't need any physical filters.

What software do I need to follow this course?

If you only shoot on film, you won't need any digital software to take this course, but you will need some colour filters.

If you shoot digitally, for imitating the effect of the colour filters you'll need either Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw, Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Lightroom Classic. I'd recommend using Adobe Lightroom Classic.

Do I need any previous skills or experience to take this course?

This course is for intermediate to advanced level students — to get the most out of this course you will need to have a good understanding of photography’s terminology, techniques and processes. And if you work digitally, having some experience editing photographs in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw, Adobe Lightroom or Lightroom Classic and using their basic tools for adjusting your photograph’s exposure, contrast, and curves is preferable.