Converting Photographs to Black and White

[Steve Randles]

Coverting to Black and White

 

The improvement in digital cameras over the past few years has seen more and more high quality colourfull images than ever before, but even today some people still prefer black and white. I think there is still a place for black and white, for the right photograph and even though these more advanced cameras offer black and white as a shooting mode, you'll be selling yourself short if you use it to capture that moment in that mode. Manufacturers set up these shooting modes to best encompass ALL of the possible light conditions known to man so your photograph will be reasonable, but it certainly wont be the best it can be in all the situations that your likely to use it. There is only one shooting mode and that is full manual control, and with some post processing in Photoshop, some truly striking (realisic, not gaudy!) black and white photographs can be created from your full colour ones

 

Converting to Black and White using the channel mixer

 

 

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I'm going to use the picture of the tower above left for converting to black and white. If you cannot see the layers palette in your photoshop then go to the top menu bar and click on "Window" then click on "Layers" The image on the right is a brief description of some of the areas of the layer palette I'll be using in this tutorial.

 

Open your image, and in the layers palette click the circular (half black/half white) button and choose "Channel Mixer" from the pop up list.

 

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The Channel mixer settings box will open, for the red set 70, green = 30 and blue = 5, then put a tick in the box next to "Monochrome" and your picture will change to B & W, you can now adjust the "Constant" slider to whatever suits your particular photo, I've used +4, your figure will be different, the "Constant" will lighten or darken your image and only very small ammounts are needed between -5 to +5 as you can make further adjustments later. So here is the tower now.

 

 

Its black and white now and its looking a lot better than a simple desaturation but its still lacking some punch or oooomph, basically its a little flat looking. Lets bring it out a bit further.

 

 

The image on the left here is what is in your layer palette now, and the top layer is selected. Holding down the CTRL key, left mouse click on the other unselected layer to select it also, now your layer palette will look like the image secand from left. At the very bottom of your layer palette is a "New Layer" icon (second from the right, next to the bin) drag these two selected layers onto the "New Layer" icon and photoshop will duplicate both layers for you, and your palette will now look like the third image from left above. Do this one more time, drag the two layers onto the new layer icon and you will have a total of 6 layers now and your layer palette will look like the fourth image.

 

Next we need to select the topmost picture layer and change the blending mode from normal to "Colour Burn" and set the opacity to anywhere between 5% and 15%, I used 15%

 

 

Now we select the next imaage layer down and apply some different settings to it. This time we set the blending mode to "Soft Light" and set the opacity between 5% and 30%, I used 30%

 

 

 

Hopefully you can now see that the photo is coming alive. one final step now. Click on the half black/half white circle at the bottom of the your palette, this time choose "Brightness/Contrast" and make any final adjustments you might need to lighten/darken the photo or an up or down contrast change, remember less is more! Here is the finished black and white photo.

 

 

Steve...

[chesters1]

cant you just shoot in black and white or even easier just turn the colour down on the monitor

[Steve Randles]

cant you just shoot in black and white

 

I guess you didn't even read the first paragraph....

 

Steve...

[poledark]

Interesting Steve, I have created a folder and will add all the little tips that come up on AN (or anywhere else)

 

Den

[Steve Randles]

Interesting Steve, I have created a folder and will add all the little tips that come up on AN (or anywhere else)

 

Den

 

I have a much much better way for you Den, I'll post it later or maybe tomorrow. But you'll love this little tip..

 

Steve...

[chesters1]

I guess you didn't even read the first paragraph....

 

Steve...

i did but i presumed you meant shooting in auto but if you have full manual control why adjust it further ? after all the more you play with it the less its the picture you took

i think also for balance you should have a PSP routine as well for the lazy and poor ,we dont want to get too hung up on the more expensive software after all not all can afford it.

Edited September 5, 2006 by chesters1

[Steve Randles]

Full manual control takes a colour picture, I dont have a B & W mode on my camera period, but some do and the mode is akin to an auto mode, giving resonable results, not brilliant.

 

I'm lucky enough to get a photoshop license by doing work for it, and I know a lot of others also have it here, the above tutorial works also with Photoshop Elements which I believe is around the same price as Paint Shop Pro, but I dont have so dont use it...so I cant write a tut for it. If you cant afford Photoshop (and I appreciate not many can) then Photoshop Elements would be the way to go.

 

My conversion is an improved one that does not change the original, no burnt out highlights or hidden details in the shadows, its the same as the colour version, just enhanced for clarity with the colours stripped and I recommend as the better of around 5-6 different methods I know of to do it.

 

You will no doubt have a "Desaturate" command in Paint shop pro that will convert a colour image to B&W, but results with that command are sketchy at best.

 

Steve...

[Newt]

i think also for balance you should have a PSP routine as well for the lazy and poor ,we dont want to get too hung up on the more expensive software after all not all can afford it.

 

Download the free Gimp software and you will be able to do everything the folks do with the more expensive packages.

[Clifftop]

like this, your comments please, the windows in my version of psp looked different to yours but i think i followed the instructions. maybe i missed the contrast at the end???

 

 

 

 

 

Clifftop - I removed my initial post that you quoted....Steve

Edited September 6, 2006 by Steve Randles

[Steve Randles]

Looks pretty good, I think you may have lightened it a little too much in the early stages as the sky is just a tad washed out. I had a look at the photo on your day out post, the sky is washed there also but not as much as this one.

 

Steve...