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Adobe | Converting Images to Black and White . . .
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Converting Images to Black and White: The "new" way
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Converting Images to black and white is a effect seen everywhere these days. Some images will be completely black and white or mainly black and white with a few items in color to give it some sort of dramatic effect. The effect is cool, however, "Desaturate" is not the way to go to achieve it. Adobe has added a new Black and White command in CS3 that does the job much better.
1. Convert to Black & White
Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Black & White
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2. Hello to the Black & White dialogue box
The Black & White dialogue box opens. This dialogue box looks similar to the Channels Mixer dialogue box, but it is very different. In the Channels Mixer dialogue box, allowed you to take specific colors out of a picture and use those color channels to mix your own custom monochrome image which is great but you have to be careful that all three of the RGB values add up to 100% so that you're not overlighting, underlighting , blowing highlights, or clipping shadows. Although you still have to be careful, the math behind it is a little different. In addition to your Reds, Greens, and Blues, you also have the secondary primaries Yellow, Cyans and Magentas. By default, the Reds, Greens, and Blues add up to 100%, and the Cyans, Yellows, and Cyans add up to another 200% so that's a total of 300% together. The analogy of keeping it at 100% doesn't quite work anymore. Now, you just have to pay attention to your image as you change values. If you select Auto, Photoshop will go ahead and do the work for you, but it might not work as well for every image.
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3. Light it up
Be sure to notice howadjusting the yellow slider has a tremendous impact on the night lighting of this scene. This is great because we can control the intensity of this lighting. With the RGB channel mixer it would be difficult to target the yellows. We could have used CMYK, but with such a small color range we would have lost too much in the other regions.
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4. Adjust settings to your liking
Adjust the sliders to fit your liking. The great thing about the adjustment layer is that it can be changed after hitting OK. |
5. About the Hue/Saturation dialogue box
If you would like to add color on top of the black and white, then just check the Tint box and move the hue and saturation slider up and down. Be sure to note that these controls are different than the Hue/Saturation controls inside the Hue/Saturation dialogue box so setting up a colorization inside of the Hue/Saturation dialogue box it not the thing and will produce a different effect. This is analogous to taking this color and making it the lightest color inside of the image, almost like Multiplying that color into your photo. If you like this preset, then be sure to save it as a custom preset.
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6. Give it some tone
Choose the tint button and adjust the sliders for a nice sepia tone or monotone look, very nice! |
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About DVPA
Bob Donlon
