Chapter 28 — Exercises

Black-and-white conversion is learned at the keyboard with a real file in front of you, so most of these exercises ask you to convert something or to look hard at a described conversion and judge it. A phone editor with a black-and-white mode and color sliders does everything you need; a desktop RAW developer does it with more precision. Difficulty is marked ⭐ (warm-up), ⭐⭐ (core), ⭐⭐⭐ (stretch). Do the starred and odd-numbered ones at minimum; model answers and critiques for those live in the book's Answers to Selected Exercises. Keep what you make — one of these conversions feeds your Portfolio.

A reminder before you start: the whole chapter is the argument that a great monochrome image is made, not desaturated. Every exercise below is a way of putting your hands on that difference.

Part A — The convert-or-keep decision (Read the Frame & judge)

Exercise 28.1 ⭐ — Four-image triage. Open your camera roll or portfolio and find four color photographs. For each, decide in one sentence: convert to black and white, or keep color — and name the reason from §28.1 (about light/shadow? form/texture? face/gesture? chaotic color? or is color the subject?). The goal is a fast, defensible instinct, not a perfect call.

Exercise 28.2 ⭐⭐ — Defend the keep. Find one color image you are certain should stay in color, and write a short paragraph defending it: what would be lost if the color were drained? Name precisely what the color is doing (a color relationship? an emotional temperature? identification of a thing?). Learning when not to convert is half the chapter.

Exercise 28.3 ⭐⭐ — Read the conversion that changed the subject. Re-read Figure 28.1 ("Two readings of one frame"). In your own words, explain how converting that market scene changed what the photograph was about, not just how it looked. Then describe a photograph from your own life where the same thing would happen — where killing the background color would re-point the picture at a person.

Exercise 28.4 ⭐⭐⭐ — Build your own convert/keep test set. Assemble six color images: three that you believe are genuinely stronger in monochrome and three that need their color. Convert all six to black and white (channel-mixed, not desaturated). Were you right? Note any image that surprised you — that turned out stronger or weaker in gray than you predicted — and write one sentence on what you misjudged. Surprises are where your eye grows.

Part B — Desaturate vs. channel mix (the central skill)

Exercise 28.5 ⭐ — Feel the bad way. Take any color photo and convert it by pure desaturation (saturation to zero, or the "grayscale" button). Look at it honestly. Find the place where two different-colored things have merged into the same gray and the edge between them has gone soft or vanished. Circle it (mentally or with a markup tool). This is the failure the rest of the chapter fixes.

Exercise 28.6 ⭐⭐ — Same file, two methods. Pick a subject that is a different color but similar brightness to its background (a red mug on green cloth, a person in a blue jacket against grey sky, a yellow flower in grass). Make two black-and-white versions: one desaturated, one channel-mixed (lift the subject's color, sink the background's). Put them side by side. Write one sentence naming exactly what the channel mixer bought you at the subject/background edge. Keep this pair — it is portfolio-grade evidence you understand conversion.

Exercise 28.7 ⭐⭐ — The contrast trap. Take your desaturated version from 28.6 and try to fix its muddy subject/background merger using only the global contrast slider. Push it as far as you like. Can you separate the two merged grays? Explain in one sentence why global contrast cannot do what the channel mixer did (recall §28.2's Common Mistake).

Exercise 28.8 ⭐⭐⭐ — Three different "correct" grays. Take one color image with at least three distinct colors in it and produce three legitimately different — but each defensible — black-and-white conversions by driving the channel mixer differently each time (e.g. one that lightens the reds, one that darkens them, one that emphasizes the greens). Caption each with what you prioritized and what kind of picture it became. The lesson: there is no single correct gray — there are the grays you choose.

Part C — Channel control (turning colors into tones)

Exercise 28.9 ⭐ — Darken one sky. Find or shoot a landscape with a blue sky and clouds. Convert to black and white, then pull the blue (and aqua) channel down until the clouds separate dramatically from the sky. Find the point just before it starts looking fake and blotchy. Note roughly how far you pushed it.

Exercise 28.10 ⭐⭐ — The skin slider. Convert a portrait (yours, or of a willing person) to black and white. Find the orange channel and move it up and down while watching the face. Describe what lifting it does (smoother, brighter, softer) versus sinking it (darker, weathered, more textured). Then set it where the picture wants and say why. If your subject has darker skin, make sure your final setting keeps their skin luminous and full of detail (§28.3 Accessibility note).

Exercise 28.11 ⭐⭐ — The filter-and-slider map. Without looking back at the chapter, fill in this table from memory, then check it: for each colored filter a film photographer might use, which channel-mixer move reproduces it, and what it does. Filters: red, yellow, orange, green. (Hint: a filter lightens its own color and darkens its complement.)

Exercise 28.12 ⭐⭐⭐ — Separate the inseparable. Deliberately find or stage a scene where the subject and background are very close in both color and brightness (a grey cat on a grey couch; a person in olive against green foliage). Convert and use only channel control — no dodging, no masks — to pry the subject free from the background into a clearly different gray. If channel control alone cannot fully do it, say so, and note what you'd reach for next (foreshadowing Part D).

Part D — Dodging and burning (lead the eye in tone)

Exercise 28.13 ⭐ — The three-move finish. Take any black-and-white conversion and do exactly three things: add a subtle edge burn (vignette), dodge your subject a third to half a stop, and burn down the single brightest distraction in the frame. Toggle before/after. Write one sentence on where the eye goes now versus before.

Exercise 28.14 ⭐⭐ — Fix the backlit doorway. Find (or shoot) a backlit subject where a bright background — a doorway, a window, a bright sky — is pulling the eye away from the subject. Using dodge-and-burn only (burn the background down, dodge the subject up), re-point the eye onto the subject. Recreate the logic of Figure 28.4. Save before-and-after.

Exercise 28.15 ⭐⭐ — The invisible vignette. Apply a deliberately too-strong vignette to an image, then dial it back in stages until you reach the point where you can feel the eye being held inward but can no longer consciously see the darkening. That threshold — felt but not seen — is the target for nearly all dodge-and-burn. Note how subtle it had to be.

Exercise 28.16 ⭐⭐⭐ — Re-perform one negative two ways. Take a single black-and-white conversion and make two finished versions that feel genuinely different using only dodging and burning (and the curve) — not changing the channel mix. For example: one bright, open, and gentle; one dark, moody, and dramatic. This is Adams's "the negative is the score, the print is the performance" made literal. Caption what each performance emphasizes.

Part E — Toning, grain, and the print look

Exercise 28.17 ⭐ — The split-tone whisper. Take a neutral black-and-white image and apply the classic recipe: warm the highlights a little, cool the shadows a little. Then halve it. Then judge: can a viewer name the color? If yes, halve it again. Describe the feeling the (very subtle) tone added.

Exercise 28.18 ⭐⭐ — Warm vs. cool, same image. Make two toned versions of one monochrome image: one warm (push the whole image gently toward sepia/brown), one cool (gently toward blue). Don't overdo either. Write one sentence each on the mood the warm and cool versions carry. Notice that the content is identical and only the temperature changed the feeling.

Exercise 28.19 ⭐⭐ — Grain at two sizes. Add a moderate amount of film grain to a conversion. Judge it at full screen — tasteful? Now view the same image as a small thumbnail (or on your phone's lock screen). Did the grain change character (whisper → sandpaper)? Set the grain for the size people will actually see it, and note the difference size made.

Exercise 28.20 ⭐⭐⭐ — Build a signature look. Combine all four finishing controls — a tone curve, a channel mix, a split tone, and a grain amount — into one black-and-white "look" you like, and apply it to three different images (a portrait, a landscape, a street scene). Does it suit all three, or does one fight it? Adjust per image where needed. You are building the kind of consistent monochrome rendering that becomes a personal voice (Chapter 39).

Part F — Settings drills & Fix the Photo

Exercise 28.21 ⭐⭐ — Settings drill: the dramatic landscape. A friend wants the "Ansel Adams sky" — near-black sky, exploding white clouds, textured foreground — from a color RAW of a meadow under a cumulus sky. Write the conversion order and moves you'd make (which channels, which direction; curve; any dodge-and-burn) and one trade-off to watch for. (Compare your answer to Figure 28.3.)

Exercise 28.22 ⭐⭐ — Settings drill: the gentle portrait. Write the conversion plan for a soft, flattering window-lit portrait of a person with deep brown skin: which channel leads, which way, what you protect, what tone and grain (if any) you'd add, and the one fairness check you must not skip.

Exercise 28.23 ⭐⭐ — Fix the photo: the muddy convert. A reader writes: "I made my photo black and white and it just looks flat and grey — there's no punch and my subject blends into the background. I turned up contrast but it didn't help." Diagnose exactly what went wrong and prescribe the specific fix, in order. (This is the chapter's central failure.)

Exercise 28.24 ⭐⭐⭐ — Fix the photo: the over-cooked print. A reader's conversion has: a sky pushed to blotchy near-black, a heavy sepia tone you can name across the room, a vignette so dark the corners are tunnels, and grain like gravel. Nothing is technically broken — it's all just too much. Write the restraint pass: for each of the four problems, say what you'd dial back and to roughly where. The lesson of §28.5 is restraint; prove you've learned it.

Part G — Interleaved (mixing prior chapters)

Exercise 28.25 ⭐⭐ — Previsualize before you shoot (with Chapter 8). Go out and previsualize: find a colorful scene, and before shooting, name out loud the zone you want three key elements to land on in the final black-and-white (Chapter 8's seeing skill). Shoot it, protecting the highlights (Chapter 26's ETTR). Then convert to hit your planned zones. Did the result match what you imagined? Where did it drift?

Exercise 28.26 ⭐⭐ — Expose to convert (with Chapters 3 & 26). Take two exposures of the same high-contrast scene: one metered "normally" and one exposed-to-the-right (brighter, protecting highlights). Convert both to the same black-and-white target. Which file gave you cleaner shadows and more room to place tones? Connect your answer to why ETTR matters for conversion.

Exercise 28.27 ⭐⭐ — Lead the eye, two languages (with Chapters 6 & 7). Take one image and make two versions that lead the eye to the same subject by two different means: a color version that advances the subject with hue/saturation (Chapter 7), and a black-and-white version that advances it with tone via dodge-and-burn (Chapter 28). Confirm both send the eye to the same place. Note which felt more controllable for you.

Exercise 28.28 ⭐⭐⭐ — Close the red door arc (the anchor). Find your own "red door" — the ordinary, textured, single-strong-color subject you've been re-photographing since the early chapters (or adopt one now). Photograph it in raking side light, then convert it to black and white with the full method: previsualize the zones, channel-mix to lift the door off its wall, dodge-and-burn for texture, a whisper of tone and grain. Compare it to your color version of the same subject. Write two sentences: what each version is about, and which one you'd keep. This is the chapter's anchor and a strong Portfolio candidate.

Stretch challenge

Exercise 28.29 ⭐⭐⭐ — One scene, the complete monochrome workflow, start to finish. Pick one scene worth the effort. Take it through every stage of the chapter as a single continuous project: (1) previsualize the zones in the field; (2) expose to protect the extremes; (3) make the convert-or-keep decision honestly; (4) convert with the channel mixer (sky/skin/foliage as relevant); (5) set global contrast with the curve; (6) dodge and burn to lead the eye; (7) add restrained tone and grain; (8) check the zones on the histogram. Write a short paragraph documenting each decision and why. Then set it beside the version you'd have gotten from a one-click desaturate. The gap between them is everything this chapter taught.

Portfolio-builder

Exercise 28.30 ⭐⭐ — The keeper decision (the Portfolio Checkpoint). Complete the chapter's Portfolio Checkpoint formally: take a color keeper from your portfolio, make the strongest deliberate black-and-white version you can, set the two side by side, and choose one for the slot. Write the one-to-two-sentence defense of the winner, and record the decision (and whether the B&W is your first in the set) in your portfolio's running list. The judgment — not the conversion — is the deliverable.

Model answers and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises appear in the book's "Answers to Selected Exercises." Try each with a real file before reading them — in conversion, the attempt is the lesson, and the muddy first try teaches more than the explanation.