The beauty of black and white scenery and shadows: Adams’ regional exposure thinking in the zoning curve in digital black and white conversion

1. Why does ‘direct color removal’ result in a gray waste film with no contrast?

When many novices try black and white photography, they directly reduce the saturation to -100 in the software, and the results are disappointing:

• Collapse of hue difference in black and white (Luminance Identity Paradox):
• In the world of color, a bright red signboard and a deep emerald green grassland have a very high visual color contrast, and the collision of red and green is instantly recognizable;
• However, in physical brightness conversion, the grayscale values of standard pure red (RGB: 255, 0, 0) and standard pure green (RGB: 0, 180, 0) under the weighted brightness perceived by the human eye may be exactly the same (both correspond to about 50% of the mid-gray gradient)**!
• Once the color is simply and roughly removed, the original vivid red and green collision instantly collapses into two borderless, sticky and confused dead gray blocks!
• The core essence of digital black and white - ‘color brightness reconstruction’:
• Black and white photographers must be like God, re-judging who should become pure black and who should become pure white among red, yellow, green and blue in the grayscale world based on the emotional expression of the picture!

2. B&W Mixer: The magic of colored filters in the digital darkroom

Traditional film darkrooms spin red, orange, yellow, and green color filters in front of the lens to control contrast. In the digital age, there is unlimited freedom in the Lightroom "Black and White Mixer":

1. Red & Orange Slider – a dramatic steamroller for the sky:

• When shooting scenery, the contrast between blue sky and white clouds is originally weak;
• Significantly lower the blue slider to the left to -40 ~ -60: the clear blue sky is instantly ruthlessly darkened into a rich black as deep as the night sky (Zone I~II);
• Pull yellow and orange to the right: The rocks and white clouds bathed in the sun are strongly brightened;
• The surreal and epic tension of black skies, white clouds, and chipped rocks breaks out in an instant!

2. Green and Yellow Sliders - Awakening of the Life Force of Forests and Grasslands:

• In many landscape photos, the woods are a mass of black briquettes after color removal;
• Push the yellow and green sliders moderately to the right to +20 ~ +40, and the dark green leaves will instantly light up into a light and delicate light gray (Zone V~VI), revealing the microscopic leaf veins.

3. Practical combat of algebraic partition curve of digital zone exposure system (Zone System)

Open the "Tone Curve" in Lightroom or Photoshop and place Ansel Adams' Ten Zones on the curve anchor points:

• Establish the black and white polar anchor points of the picture (The Anchors):
• Zone 0 (pure black point, RGB: 0, 0, 0): Hold down the Alt key and drag the "Black Level" slider to the left until sporadic pure black spots just appear in the tiny deep pools or backlit rock gaps in the picture (make sure the picture has a stable and thick base, but never make a large area completely black);
• **Zone
• S-shaped high-contrast tone curve engraving:
• Establish an anchor point at 1/4 of the curve (Shadow Zone III) and press it down slightly to make the dark parts deeper and more concise;
• Establish an anchor point at 3/4 of the curve (Highlight Zone VII) and lift it slightly to make the light-receiving surface clearer and purer;
• Deliberately compressing the originally mediocre and scattered mid-tones, widening the step gradient between light and dark parts, the picture is instantly transformed, exuding a sense of silver salt transparency as if the master carefully printed it on large-format loose sheets!

4. Infusing charm with partial occlusion and lighting (Dodge & Burn)

Adams once had a famous saying: "The negative is the score, and the printing is the performance." RAW conversion only completes the score, and the soul of the master-level black and white scenery lies in local hand-painted lightening:

• Brush local lighting (Burn):
• Use a soft-edged brush to lower the exposure -0.3EV ~ -0.7EV to darken the unnecessary messy rocks and irrelevant debris around the edges of the picture;
• Like a stage spotlight, it forces the viewer’s gaze to focus on the subject in the center of the picture.
• Brush local dodge and highlight (Dodge):
• Increase exposure by +0.3EV and increase micro-clarity;
• Gently brush along the narrow mountain ridges that receive light from the ridges and the reflective highlight strips of the winding rivers;
• Artificially carved highly penetrating high-contrast guiding lines on a two-dimensional plane, creating a vivid and shocking moment in black and white!

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