Picture It Black and White

In photography and scrapbooking, the color tone of a photo plays a part in the overall feel or emotion of the “big picture”. It also can enhance or contribute to the color scheme of a layout. Both black and white and sepia toning originally started as a printing method for photos, but has now become more of a genre due to the availability to create your own tone at home prior to printing. There are a handful of ways to obtain the beautiful look of black and white photos. See this month's Photo Stop and Creation Station for some handy tips. This month in the café, we look at layouts featuring photo toning.

Black and White photos give a timelessness feel to any photo, and can also add a very distinct aura of class given the right photo. The absence of color gives photos emotion, and can also make an unusable color photo completely perfect. Michelle’s layout “Laugh” shows us adorable pictures of her daughter being random. She used black and white as a means of covering up imperfections in the original photo. In Betsy’s layout, “... Dreamt ...”, the black and white is additionally enhanced by an effect called “Newspaper”. It gives her photos more of that aged look without adding too much texture and taking away from her subject. The timeless feel of a black and white can be enhanced by embellishments that look aged or worn as in Toni’s layout, “Family”. The combination of the agelessness of the paper line and the beautiful picture of her daughter make the layout feel as if it belongs in a art history book instead of in our magazine!

Laugh by Michelle Lanning

Supplies: Papers, Die-Cuts: Carolee's Creations, Cardstock: Bazzill Basics Paper, Flower: Heidi Swapp.

Design Notes: Because none of these shots were technically the best, I decided to turn them black and white to cover the imperfections. When doing so I also changed the mood of the photos and it truly showed how involved in playing my daughter was. I also printed out my photos on one piece of photo paper. I had arranged them to my liking in Photoshop and them simply printed and adhered it -- so easy!

Journaling: The shots may not be perfect but they show how deep in thought you are when playing. And that's why I love them!

I Dreamt For You This Life by Betsy Sammarco

Supplies: Papers, Die-Cuts: Collage Press, Acrylic: Maya Road, Rub-Ons: Pink Paislee, Other: heart sequins, trim.

Design Notes: To get the small b/w photos, I scanned prints of my boys and fit them into crop shapes of the right shape and size in PSE. I converted the resulting cropped photo to black and white, selecting "newspaper" effect in PSE. I very often use "newspaper" effect when converting to black and white because I like the look.

Journaling: I listed aspects of the life I dreamt for my boys on two of the die cuts as follows: balls in fields, frogs in ponds, climbin’ trees, skinned knees, magic rocks, cool bugs, dragonflies, mud stompin’, puddle jumpin’, lemondade stand, baseball cards, two wheelers, lots of dirt, diggin’ holes, bees in trees, whiffle balls, sun showers, getting wet, shovelin’ snow, forts in trees, forts in bushes, kickin’ cans, forts of sticks, squirt guns, water balloons, blanket tents, ridin’ waves, sand castles, snow forts, skimmin’ rocks.

Family by Toni Kelly

Supplies: Papers, Die-Cuts: Webster’s Pages, Bling: Prima Marketing, Bookplate: Tim Holtz, Other: lace, flowers.

Design Notes: I distressed the paper with an edge distresser and chalks. The flowers and heart are cut from the Webster’s Pages paper and the cardstock cut using deco scissors. I used liquid pearl for dots on the cardstock.