black and white tutorial?

davidtan · 3 Jul 2006 at 19:11

I've googled, but haven't found a decent tutorial to turn photos to black and white in photoshop. Any suggestions?

A.N.Other · 3 Jul 2006 at 19:39

Duplicate layer.
Create a new adjustment layer (hue / saturation).
Window comes up with three sliders - move the one for saturation to the left (towards -100).

That's the way I've always done it, anyway. It has the advantage that if you just want to leave the slightest hint of colour, you can put the slider to -90, for example. Also, it allows you to paint over areas within the adjustment layer to reveal colours / parts of the image (see here).

Hope that helps

hoodmeister · 3 Jul 2006 at 19:45

Tons of ways of doing this.
The most popular with many is using the channel mixer set to monochrome. By controling the red, blue and green channels individually you can mimic the effects of filters used in "real" B&W film photography.
Depending on how well each of the individual channels has been exposed, though, that can give grainy results.
Another (of many) ways of converting to B&W is to use the lightness channel in lab colour mode. You have no control over the output, but the results are very smooth, and react well to further editing.

matty · 3 Jul 2006 at 19:47

there are a few on the net, a couple for you here:

black and white videos

or text notes, courtesy of a photo magazine

Convert to greyscale
Selecting Image > Mode > Grayscale is the simplest method for converting colour images to black and white, and it’s perhaps for this reason that it’s not generally well regarded by black and white aficionados. However, it actually does a pretty good job of separating colours tonally – more so than simply ‘desaturating’ the image; what’s more, it reduces the number of colour channels in the image from three (RGB) to one (greyscale), so your files become one-third their original size. The disadvantage of this method is that you’ll have to convert the image back to RGB mode (it’ll still appear mono, as the colour’s been removed) in order to apply many filters and image adjustments.

Desaturate the colours
You can retain the three colour channels in your image by ‘desaturating’ it (Image > Adjustments > Desaturate); this saves you having to convert from greyscale back to RGB to apply adjustments that only work on RGB images. However, although desaturation sounds ideal in principle, because you’re removing the colours without altering the brightness values, it can leave images looking tonally very similar. Look at the red/yellow logo on our subject’s shirt – the greyscale conversion has distinguished the tones well, but the desaturate conversion produces identical brightness levels, and the red/yellow markings have become indistinguishable.

Convert to Lab mode
Many mono enthusiasts prefer this slightly more complex solution. If you switch to Lab mode (Image > Mode > Lab Color), Photoshop splits the image information in a very different way. Instead of red, green and blue channels, you’ll have a Lightness channel accompanied by two (‘a’ and ‘b’) colour channels. If you delete the ‘a’ and ‘b’ channels, then convert the image into greyscale mode, you have in theory ditched all the colour information and retained only the lightness values. You might think this would give the same results as desaturation, but it doesn’t; it separates colours just as well as the greyscale conversion, but also gives noticeably lighter, more ‘open’ tones.

Channel Mixer
The Channel Mixer (Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer) is the most complex conversion option, but it can also be the most effective. First, make sure the Monochrome box is checked; you can now adjust the proportion of the red, green and blue channels to mimic the effect of traditional black and white filters. In our example we’ve used only the red channel, and this has the same effect as using a red filter with monochrome film. Non-red colours (such as the blue sky) are darkened, while red colours (such as the subject’s face) are lightened. When the process is complete, you have an RGB image which is perfect for toning, or further editing.

A.N.Other · 3 Jul 2006 at 20:29

I've never played around with the channel mixer (far to complicated for the likes of me), but I've done the Lab Mode conversion before. Personally, I'm not a fan of it - it leaves a rather washed out image with little depth imo. I've done a comparison of the way I posted with doing this.

Here

// EDIT // Although I do agree that my way is more grainy. Experiment yourself and see what you think.

olv · 3 Jul 2006 at 21:29

So far i have just used the desaturate tool if wanting to convert to B&W. Never thought there were different methods. What are the major advantages/disadvantages of this method?

ranarama · 3 Jul 2006 at 21:40

olv said:
So far i have just used the desaturate tool if wanting to convert to B&W. Never thought there were different methods. What are the major advantages/disadvantages of this method?

You can use the channel mixer to isolate the primary colours to give some really good B&W effects, particularly with blue skies. Basically using desaturate can make some very flat images whereas careful use of the channel mixer can really make them much more contrasty. Give me a few minutes and I'll see if I can find an example.

ranarama · 3 Jul 2006 at 22:04

OK here's an example. No blue sky in this but it still shows you that the images can be much better not using desaturate.. First the original...

Now desaturated...

And now using the channel mixer. I can't remember which settings I used but I think it gives it a bit more punch as well as more control than using the contrast/brightness settings...

olv · 3 Jul 2006 at 22:23

ahh good illustration thank you. Shame i just had three B&W 30" prints done

A.N.Other · 3 Jul 2006 at 23:23

The channel mixer looks by far the best there - I didn't realise the difference was as marked as that. I think I'll have to change my technique then :rolleyes:

.

Thanks for the examples!

Mint Sauce · 5 Jul 2006 at 05:47

Anyway to do this (channel mixer style method) with PSE4? Or The GIMP? Cheers!

Lostkat · 5 Jul 2006 at 06:10

Just another tip for B&W conversions. Applying a very slight S-shaped curve to the image after conversion can give a lot of impact, especially if the image is a little flat.