Digital Photo Processing - Other Ways To Make Photos More Dramatic

SUMMARY: Don't just convert digital photos to grayscale the 'old fashioned way'.

Converting photos to black & white (grayscale) can help make them more artistic, or when you increase the contrast, more dramatic. Besides just using your digital imaging software's "convert to grayscale" feature, here are two other ways to add drama to a photo with differing results. Feel free to experiment.

1. Desaturate your colors. Your photo software may have a feature called "hue, saturation, and brightness". Keep your hue level normal, desaturate your colors (try 100% or other intervals) and experiment with brightness values. Or, just desaturate your colors and then adjust the photo's brightness and contrast levels.

2. Convert your photos to monotone or duotone images (not all photo software packages have this feature - check your manual). Experiment with the monotone and duotone colors. For other interesting effects, use tritone and quadtone to add richer detail in shadow areas.

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