Ansel Adams and Filters

Check out Monotlith, the Face of Half Dome at https://northrup.photo/podcast/picture-this-photography-podcast-ep-5-ansel-adams/. Also check out the video where his son, Michael Adams, talks about his father’s photography: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pUSKskU0n8

Ansel Adams was a musician before he decided to make a career change to photography. According to his son, Michael, it was after he switched from a yellow to a red filter to film Half Dome, and saw this resultant image, that he decided to become a professional photographer.

You now have the ability to do something to give an identical type of result. You can use filters in post-processing. These filters are most evident in the NIK and Topaz tools, available for Elements, Photoshop CC, and Lightroom. With these preset plugins, you can first select a preset style and then choose from different color channels on the right of many of the preset panels. As shown in the black and white tutorial, you can also use the color channel sliders as a means to control the amount any particular color contributes to an image, similar in effect to Ansel Adams use of filters.

Ansel Adams was a creative and adventuresome photographer. He was a co-founder of the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, AZ. He developed his own black and white images, used filters, dodging and burning, and many other creative ways to enhance his initial photographs. He would never have settled for a one-size-fits-all software program to produce a JPG, built into a digital camera. Don't ever be intimidated by someone who claims that digital images produced en-mass by your camera are 'natural'. Only a raw file is ‘natural’, and it needs to be developed in post-processing. JPGs out of the camera are just productions of engineers, developed by standardized methods, similar to drug store development. Be courageous, and learn to really develop your own photos in post processing with raw images. All the image data is available to you in a raw image. Little is available in an out-of-camera JPG. You have all the tools Ansel Adams used, at your fingertips, and more. Your raw images are the same as Ansel Adams’ negatives. We just don’t use chemicals and physical tricks to produce innovative results anymore.

Here are some images that use different filters:

Uses color channel sliders that are part of Photoshop CC Black White adjustment layer:

With Silver Efex Pro, blue filter

Silver Efex Pro 2 with yellow filter

Silver Efex Pro 2 with red filter

Topaz BW Effects 2 Platinum IV preset with red filter

Ansel Adams red filter on left, yellow filter on right.