Very High Contrast B&W Print Options: Film and Digital

As with all creative departures, manipulation done for its own sake may be interesting, but the true test of any applied technique is whether or not it serves the image. The goal should always be to use technique to enhance your thoughts and feelings about the moment. You may photograph with a certain end look in mind but change your approach and techniques later. Or you may come upon an image in your files that suddenly strikes you as apt for an approach radically different than when you first made the exposure. Following are some interpretive high contrast approaches and the techniques that you can use to achieve them. Note that some references are made to materials no longer available; scanning prints or negatives, or working with digital image files, and using digital processing can achieve the same ends.

High Contrast Processing

High contrast printing involves eliminating or subduing the middle tonal values, thus producing an image where the visual information is communicated in black and white, with little or no gray tonality. High contrast can be used to make near line-drawing renditions, or to create highly graphic interpretations of a scene. As it mutes information in the middle values it accentuates the lines and forms that define the subject.

Virtually every image can be printed in high contrast; critical decisions, however, will limit this technique to certain moods or scenes. Fashion, urban landscapes, portraits, architecture and winterscapes are the most common types of images to which high-contrast techniques are applied, but this list by no means limits the possibilities.

This high contrast image was made from a digital file of leaves and branches in the snow. The image was loaded in Photoshop into the Threshold Adjustment Layer. After merging the Layer and then creating a Duplicate Layer on which painting work was done, a white foreground brush was used to paint away certain areas and details, and a black foreground brush was used to paint into the darker areas where discontinuous glitches of white appeared. Similar work can be done on lith film using opaque dyes. The image was then printed on a slightly warm background layer.

For darkroom workers, the simplest way to achieve a high contrast effect is to work with a high-contrast paper or high-contrast filter when using VC paper, namely a #5 grade. With most negatives, this choice eliminates many of the middle gray values.

Unlike more commonly used grades, such as #2 or #3, grade #5 has a rather narrow exposure latitude, which means that critical testing is key. Expose too long and the whites will "gray up"; underexposure may yield a very weak image. (#5 can also be used to correct very underexposed negatives, and will often reveal details not seen by the untrained eye.)

If even a #5 grade fails to yield the desired result use of a "lith" film as an intermediary will do the trick. Lith (also called ortho) film is still available today from Freestyle (note: no commercial affiliation) in 8x10 sheets, mainly used by those who do platinum and palladium and other "alternative process" work. In the past it was available in formats from 35mm up. When developed in a special high-contrast developer no middle gray values will record. You could also have used Kodak Tech Pan film developed for high contrast. (Note: No longer available.)

You could make an intermediary lith negative from an original negative or slide. To make it from a slide, all you need to do was enlarge or contact print the slide onto the lith film, just as you would make a print. This creates a reversed, or negative image, which you then use to make a positive print. To make a lith negative from a negative, you first enlarge or contact print the negative onto the lith film, and then enlarged or contacted that positive onto another sheet of lith film, which creates a negative. (All film imaging, when done on film or paper, goes negative-positive-negative-positive, and so forth. This allows for some interesting image derivations.) Lith film can be processed under red safelight conditions, so you can inspect the negative as it developed to get it just right.

Once the lith negative is created, you can retouch it with dye to eliminate any gray values that may still exist; when you opaque a negative that opaqued area will print white. After you're satisfied with the negative you can print on virtually any grade paper to obtain a high-contrast image, though a #5 will guarantee the best effect.

You can also photograph with a high-contrast film in the camera, though experience shows that working from a full-tone negative and then converting it to high-contrast yields the most options.

The digital high-contrast conversion is quite simple. You can use presets in many programs; work with a Curve or Levels Adjustment Layer in Photoshop; or, my usual technique, work with the Threshold Adjustment Layer. The latter has slider control options that allow you to fine tune results. And, just like using dye on lith film, you can paint with black (or sometimes white) to remove any "flaws" or even eliminate details by covering them so they do not show through on the final image. 

High contrast does not always mean just black and white and no gray values: there may be an alteration of tonal values to accentuate a "hard" contrast with some gray values remaining. This effect can be used effectively for all manner of imaging where you don't want a line-drawing effect yet want the graphic appeal of a higher-than-normal contrast image.