A step by step tutorial for beginners on how to make a good looking digital black and white image"

And I quote;

"There are however some unwritten rules on what makes a black and white image good.

Contrast. There should be (almost) pure darks and whites.

Tonality. The more tones, the better. An image that consists of just one tone of gray, would be pretty boring, the image would look very flat.

Gradual change of tonality and balance in tones. This one pretty much sums up 1 and 2. High contrast looks nice, but if the contrast is too high, the tonality becomes less. Regarding balance: always take a final look at the end result and see if the image is balanced and that it exactly reflects what you had in mind. An image can be technically correct but it doesn’t reflect your vision or mood.

I think that these rules are true on some level. The most important thing however is subject and composition. A boring and badly composed image, looks boring and bad in colour and in black and white. You can change the tonality of an image with Photoshop, but you can’t change composition on subject (well, ok, you can crop and you can clone out some things, but you get the point)."


If you wish to see some of this author/photographer's works.. and a website he created for B & W Fine Art Photography ... go here; Joel Tjintjelaar - bwvision.com.

Some good pointers here. Especially the emphasis on range of tones with a high but not too high degree of contrast, and that even then technically perfect may not say what you want to say with the image.