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Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine
Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black
Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...
and white
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...
to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey
Grey (more frequent in British English) or gray (more frequent in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning that it has no chroma. It is the color of a cloud-covered s ...
. It is also known as greyscale
In digital photography, computer-generated imagery, and colorimetry, a greyscale (more common in Commonwealth English) or grayscale (more common in American English) image is one in which the value of each pixel is a single sample repres ...
in technical settings.
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 andart film
An art film, arthouse film, or specialty film is an independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made prima ...
(s).
Early photographs in the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries were often developed in black and white, as an alternative to sepia due to limitations in film available at the time. Black and white was also prevalent in early television
Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
broadcasts, which were displayed by changing the intensity of monochrome phosphurs on the inside of the screen, before the introduction of colour from the 1950s onwards.
Black and white continues to be used in certain sections of the modern arts field, either stylistically or to invoke the perception of a historic work or setting.
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.Computing
Incomputing
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ...
terminology, ''black-and-white'' is sometimes used to refer to a binary image
A binary image is a digital image that consists of pixels that can have one of exactly two colors, usually black and white. Each pixel is stored as a single bit — i.e. either a 0 or 1.
A binary image can be stored in memory as a bitmap: a p ...
consisting solely of pure black pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a Raster graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, p ...
s 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
In digital photography, computer-generated imagery, and colorimetry, a greyscale (more common in Commonwealth English) or grayscale (more common in American English) image is one in which the value of each pixel is a single sample (signal), s ...
.Renner, Honey (2011). ''Fifty Shades of Greyscale: A History of Greyscale Cinema'', p. 13. Knob Publishers, Nice.
See also
*dr5 chrome
dr5, or dr5 Chrome, is a reversal black and white process, through which most kinds of black-and-white negative films produce transparencies, including Scala and Foma-r films (slides). The dr5 process is a chemical reversal process, rather than ...
*List of black-and-white films produced since 1966
American film and television studios terminated production of black-and-white output in 1966 and, during the following two years, the rest of the world followed suit. At the start of the 1960s, transition to color proceeded slowly, with major studi ...
*Monochromatic color
A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, mon ...
*Panchromatic film
A panchromatic emulsion is a type of photographic emulsion that is sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light, and produces a monochrome photograph—typically black and white. Most modern commercially available film is panchromatic, and the ...
*Selective color
Image editing encompasses the processes of altering images, whether they are Digital photography, digital photographs, traditional Photographic processing, photo-chemical photographs, or illustrations. Traditional analog image editing is known ...
References
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