Media

Some popular black-and-white media forms of the past include:

Movies and animated cartoons. While some color film processes (including hand coloring) were experimented with and in limited use from the earliest days of the motion picture, the switch from films almost always being in black-and-white to almost always being in color was a gradual process mostly taking place from the 1930s to the 1950s. Even when most studios had the capabilities to make color films, they were not wildly popular at first because early tinting techniques and Technicolor film left much to be desired. For the years 1940–1966 a separate Academy Award for Best Art Direction was given for black and white movies, along with one for those in color. Some modern directors still shoot in black and white as an artistic choice, though it is much less common for a major Hollywood production. See List of recent films in black-and-white.

Photography was black-and-white or shades of sepia. Color photography was originally rare and expensive, and early on often less true to life. Color photography became much more common in middle of the 20th century, and has become even more common since. Black-and-white remains a niche market for photographers who use the medium for artistic purposes. This can take the form of black and white film or digital conversion to greyscale, with optional image manipulation to enhance the results. For amateur use, Kodak manufactures a black-and-white disposable camera. Special films are produced today which give black and white images using the ubiquitous C41 color process.

Television was originally broadcast in black-and-white. Some color broadcasts began in the 1950s, with color becoming common in western industrialized nations during the 1960s and 1970s. The United States upgraded to the color standard between 1964 and 1967, Canada began airing colour television in 1966 while the United Kingdom settled on an official color system in November 1969. Australia kept airing black-and-white broadcasts until 1975. While no longer used much professionally, many consumer camcorders have the ability to record in black-and-white.

Most newspapers were black-and-white until the late 1970s; ''The New York Times'' and ''The Washington Post'' remained in black-and-white until the 1990s, some claiming ''USA Today'' was the major impetus for the change. Even today, many newspapers restrict color photographs to the front and other prominent pages since mass producing photographs in black-and-white is considerably cheaper than color.

''Jet'' magazine was either all or mostly black-and-white until the end of the 20th century, when it became all-color.

School yearbooks have (historically) been printed either entirely or mostly in black-and-white. All-color school yearbooks are rare as of now, but the rate is increasing.

Today black-and-white media often has a "nostalgic," historic, or anachronistic feel to it. For example, the 1998 Woody Allen film ''Celebrity'' was shot entirely in black-and-white. Other films, such as ''American History X'' and ''The Wizard of Oz'' play with the concept of the black-and-white anachronism, using it to selectively portray scenes and characters who are either more outdated or dull than the characters and scenes shot in full-color. This manipulation of color appears in the film ''Sin City'' and the occasional television commercial. Wim Wenders' 1987 film ''Wings of Desire'' uses sepiatone black-and-white for the scenes shot from the angels' perspective. When Damiel, the angel (the film's main character) becomes a human, the film changes to color emphatising his new "real life" view of the world.

Since the mid-1960s, few mainstream films have been shot entirely on black-and-white film stock, even if they are intended to be presented theatrically in black-and-white. The reasons are frequently commercial, as it is difficult to sell a film for television broadcasting if no color version exists. For example, movies such as John Boorman's ''The General'' and Joel Coen's ''The Man Who Wasn't There'' were obliged to be filmed in color by their respective distributors, despite being presented in black-and-white for artistic reasons. ''Clerks'' is one of the few well-known recent films shot in black-and-white for no artistic purpose; due to the extremely low out-of-pocket budget, the production team could not afford the added costs of shooting in color (though the difference in film stock price would be slight, the store's fluorescent lights could not be used to light for color; by shooting in black and white, the film did not have to rent lighting equipment).

Some modern film directors will occasionally shoot movies in black-and-white because they believe it captures their vision better. This is also true of black-and-white photography, where many photographers choose to shoot in solely black-and-white since the stark contrasts enhances the subject matter.

Computing

Most personal computers had monochrome (black-and-white, black and green, or black and amber) screens until the late 1980s; however computers that could be connected to television screens, including the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Sinclair QL, the Radio Shack Color Computer, the Apple II, the Texas Instruments TI-99, and the Atari 400 and Atari 800 supported color.

In computing terminology black-and-white is often used to refer to an image consisting ''solely'' of black or white pixels; what would normally be called a black-and-white image is more accurately referred to in this context as ''grayscale'' or ''greyscale'', ie an image containing shades of grey.