Black-and-white

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A black-and-white photo of a breadfruit, c. 1870 Breadfruit.jpg
A black-and-white photo of a breadfruit, c.1870

Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of gray.

Contents

Media

The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. However, there are exceptions to this rule, including black and white fine art photography, as well as many film motion pictures and art film(s).

Photography

McDonald Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana - Ansel Adams - Taken between 1933 and 1942 Looking across lake, "McDonald Lake, Glacier National Park," Montana., 1933 - 1942 - NARA - 519873.tif
McDonald Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana – Ansel Adams – Taken between 1933 and 1942

Contemporary use

Since the late 1960s, few mainstream films have been shot in black-and-white. The reasons are frequently commercial, as it is difficult to sell a film for television broadcasting if the film is not in color. 1961 was the last year in which the majority of Hollywood films were released in black and white. [1]

Computing

In computing terminology, black-and-white is sometimes used to refer to a binary image consisting solely of pure black pixels and pure white ones; what would normally be called a black-and-white image, that is, an image containing shades of gray, is referred to in this context as grayscale. [2]

See also

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References

  1. Robertson, Patrick (2001). Film Facts, Billboard Books, p. 167. ISBN   9780823079438
  2. Renner, Honey (2011). Fifty Shades of Greyscale: A History of Greyscale Cinema, p. 13. Knob Publishers, Nice.