Make Concert Shots Better With Picasa's Black And White Filter

B&WPop.jpg The idea of converting concert pictures to black and white to hide their flaws, which came up in a post earlier today, is pretty nifty — but what if you don't fancy getting to grips with the complexities of Photoshop or GIMP? Fortunately, there's a basic black and white converter built into Picasa, a friendlier if less subtle tool. To access it, double-click on the image you want to edit, select Effects then B&W. As the example above demonstrates, going monochrome isn't going to do much for issues like camera shake or generally low image quality (the shot in question is a hasty catch on a BlackBerry), but it can add a certain atmosphere. (By the way, if you can identify the performer, you're even more tragic than me!)


    Even better is the "Filtered B&W", which let's you pick the hue that the grayscale conversion is based on. This helps you extract the best possible tonal range from the image.

    Just proves an awful photo will always look awful - in fact it looks so bad in black and white (wait, that's just a really flat and badly done range of grimy greys) that I gotta wonder how exactly you are hoping to promote the idea, flawed tho it is.

Join the discussion!

Trending Stories Right Now