Learning Center
Black & White

It used to be, not so long ago that one would have to choose whether they wanted their pictures to be in black and white or in color before they took them. With so many tools at our immediate disposal in the digital era, it is advantageous to shoot everything in color, even if your camera has a black and white mode. Why is this you ask? Images that are shot in black and white mode are generally shot in a grey scale mode by using only one of three available channels the potential information available to create your black and white images. Color images are shot in RGB mode meaning Red, Green and Blue (three different channels) and are combined to make one image. Utilizing all of this information to create your black and white image gives you infinitely more control over the final product and here's how and why.

Download the image below (bluedoorjam.jpg) and open it in Photoshop. Right click on the image and do save picture as.

Here is an image that has really intense color in it.

Though there is intense color there is actually not a lot of contrast and the colors have similar value, which becomes apparent once the color has been removed by using the basic desaturate.

In order to emphasize the shape and make the image a little snappier we can use the levels or in this case the auto levels function.



This increases contrast and starts to give our image more depth.



If we want to increase this effect we can go into the brightness and contrast and increase the contrast.



Take the slider from the contrast and increase it to your liking.



Another way to get to black and white utilizes the various color information of the image. By using the channel mixer we have control of which channel (red, blue or green) is used for the conversion. Because each channel contains different information, depending on the channel can alter your image signifigantly. We'll start with the same image but this time instead of uniformly removing the color information, we are going to use it to mix the output by biasing the channels that are used for the switch to monochrome.



When you open the channel mixer dialog box you get to control which source channels are used so in effect it is no longer simply about contrast but about color as well. The first thing that you want to do is check the Monochrome option in the lower left side and then start manipulating the sliders and see your results. As a general rule you want the percentage of all channels to equal 100 percent. They can be mixed together in any amount that you desire, but here I'll show you the extremes.



Here is the Red at 100%. (Blue and Green at 0%)



Here is the Blue at 100%. (Red and Green at 0%)



And here is the Green at 100%. (Red and Blue at 0%)



Another way to convert to black and white is using something called Variations.



Here is the dialog box that opens up when you select Variations. Check the Saturation preference. And you can adjust how subtle or extreme the effect is by adjusting the Fine/Coarse slider.



By moving the slider to coarse you can quickly remove the color this way as well. The nice thing about Variations is that it allows one to keep just a subtle amount of color in an image which can give a hand colored look to your image.



Or if you prefer you can remove all of the color. As you can see, the effect is much softer and lighter then using desaturation.



And you can always go back to auto levels or levels if you want to add a little more contrast to your image.



If you want to tone your image sepia (or any other color for that matter) go to Hue/Saturation.



When the dialog box is displayed check the Colorize option. Now move the Hue slider to change the color and Saturation slider to control the intensity of the color.



Here's the result of toning with Hue and Saturation.



Other ways of black and white conversion include using third party plug in filters. In this case I am using Nik Efx 2.0 filter plug in. This is using their infrared filter. Though it doesn't actually utilize the infrared spectrum, it simulates the effect pretty well. This is only one of four versions of this filter.



This is another Nik Efx filter called old photo. It is supposed to simulate the aged look of an old photograph. This is only one of the six different types of old photo conversions.



And here's a quick, down and dirty way to create selective color in a black and white image. First create a duplicate layer of your image.



Next convert the top layer to black and white using one of the above methods. Note that you now have two different layers. Only the top one is black and white, but the bottom one is in full color. Then grab the eraser tool and erase the top black and white layer to reveal the color layer underneath. Keep in mind that you can control the size and shape of the eraser as well as the edge hardness.



The result is an image in both black and white and color.



I hope this has given you a new idea or two on how to make your black and whites exactly what you envision.

Good Luck.