Working with digital images

[usernut]

any idea how I can take macro close ups in black and white. I use a vivitar 3.3mega pixels vivicam. I get close ups ok but nothing in manual mentions black and white pics.
do I do this with the digital camera or with the software.

[ShutterbugGail]

Hi there, usernut and welcome to the Q&A Board.

If you don't have a black and white setting in your camera, you can easily change the color of an image to B&W with photo editing software.

If you don't have a program with it, you can try this wonderful, free program called PhotoFiltre (www.photofiltre.com).  Here are the menus to use after you open an image (don't forget to work on a duplicate of the original, not the original itself): Filter > Aged effect > Black and White.

I'm so impressed with this program, that I wrote a special writeup about it:

http://www.digicamhelp.com/photofiltre/

In some photo editing programs, such as Photoshop and Adobe Elements, you use the "desaturate" command.

[usernut]

That,s a great wee program. I have just downloaded it and did as you said and got a very good black and white pic. took me minutes to do what i,ve been trying to do for days. the program is very easy to use, and i,ll be using it lots. thanks very much for the great help, much appreciated.

[Deb]

Hi, if you've got Photoshop Elements or full-blown Photoshop, Paint-Shop Pro or PhotoPaint, here is a link to a great (free) plug-in for black and white conversion as well as many other film effects. It's called "Virtual Photographer". I recently learned about it and have been having a ball playing with it. You can find it at http://www.optikvervelabs.com/ . Happy tweaking!