Friday, February 8, 2008

Black & White vs. Sepia

Most of my packages include a CD with b&w photos, but sometimes I also include a CD with sepia photos - and I always get the same question; what exactly is sepia?

Well, there is no single color known as “sepia”, some people just think of an aged photo when they hear the word — and it is indeed basically a b&w photo, with a tint of red and yellow.

Many photographers prefer a light sepia to b&w just, because it pleases the skin tones, and the prints don't look quite as blue / some photo printing services even ad it to their b&w printing formula. I guess Adobe recommends setting
RGB to 11,66,20 and HSV to 30%, 82, 44%, but I think every photographer has his own recipe ... and it really depends on how strong you want it to be.

No comments: