It may have been the first day of spring, but “The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play…”

Even so, the dogs and I took a walk on that “cold, cold, wet day”.

For Water, Water Everywhere (Photos by Jez) and Weekend Sky (Blog of Hammad Rais).

Yesterday did not feel at all like spring. A chilly, gray day, so dark that photos came out almost black and white. Sometimes converting to black and white can be more appealing than a photo where the colors are muddy gray from a lack of light. Also, it is easier to bring out the details in black and white clouds. So I gave it a try.

Technique for black and white clouds

To coax out the cloud details in the above photos I blended together two layers in the GIMP*. The first used desaturation (colors>desaturate>desaturate). The second layer used the color-to-gray algorithm (colors>desaturate>color-to-gray). Then I used the multiply blend mode on the top layer (the color-to-gray one) and applied a layer mask to limit the effect to the sky.

If you’d like to try this, check out this post: Black-and-white digital photo processing part 3: Using the GIMP. It describes the different tools for black and white available in the GIMP.

*GIMP stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program; it is open source (free) software. I’ve never used Photo Shop, but many compare the GIMP to it. The GIMP resides on your computer and does not require internet (“cloud”) access.

Quick Note:

In case you are unfamiliar, the quotes at the top are from The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss:

The sun did not shine.

It was too wet to play.

So we sat in the house

All that cold, cold wet day.

Dr. Seuss