Black and white conversion methods with Photoshop
Technique Tuesday!
Most photo-editing probably has a desaturate button, or maybe even a grayscale mode. These remove the color and also the life from a photo. Photoshop had a wonderful conversion method in the Channel Mixer: you’d add an adjustment layer, tick the monochrome box, and slide your green and blue sliders up to total about 100. Red would stay down around 0 so that you wouldn’t be adding unwanted noise to your print. Here’s what you’d get:
would become…
Not too bad, but still kind of dull.
The new Black and White dialog box is used in an adjustment layer. Here’s how it works:
- Open your image and duplicate it.
- Click the Adjustment Layer icon and select Black & White. Click on the auto settings. It’s already better than what I did using the Channel Mixer!! But it can be tweaked quite a bit more.
- You can play with the sliders by color if you want, but here’s the really fun part: click and hold right on the image itself in any area you want to adjust and you’ll get a scrubby slider. You can make your adjustments much more intuitively this way. If you don’t like what you’ve done, the alt key will turn the Cancel button into “Reset”.
- There is also a tint checkbox which will allow you to add sepia or other toning right in the same step. There’s a time-saver!
- Click the Adjustment Layer icon again and select Curves. Place a point to preserve your shadows, lower the highlight point if needed, and tweak the curves until you’re happy.
I lost the mid-ground trees using this method. I’m sure I could recover them if I cared, but the contrast and life in the print is so much better than any other method that I’ve tried…I just need to play with it some more. What a pleasure that will be!
Tags: Digital Art, Photography, photoshop, tutorialsRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Digital Art, Photography, Technique Tuesday, Tutorials & Techniques
7 opinions for Black and white conversion methods with Photoshop
Chris Tessnear
Jan 29, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Nice tutorial! Artists often forget the power and beauty of black and white.
Cyndi
Jan 29, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Thank you, Chris!
Joshua Johnson
Jan 29, 2008 at 10:19 pm
These pictures remind me of the type of old western stuff I normally associate with sepia…do you think that would work?
(See, I can do more than just tag you in silly games of tag. You are it, though.)
Cyndi
Jan 30, 2008 at 8:08 am
Absolutely! This new adjustment layer approach has a built-in checkbox for tinting, allowing you to add the sepia tones in the same step if you want. It’s amazing.
Elinor Stecker-Orel
Jan 30, 2008 at 10:33 pm
I never used scrubby sliders before, and I appreciate your information. I tried it on a photo, and it was fun to see the controls at work. Thanks for posting the tutorial.
Elinor
Cyndi
Jan 31, 2008 at 10:40 am
Isn’t it just the coolest thing?! What a concept :-)
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May 19, 2008 at 8:01 am
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