Posted by Mike Sellers on August 9, 2008 at 9:25 AM
What is the best way to convert to black and white using photoshop?
Mike
Posted by John Mumaw on August 9, 2008 at 11:43 AM
I like using the Black & White adjustment layer in CS 3 primarily because you can hover the mouse over the image, click anywhere in the image and PS automatically selects the slider for the predominant color. Clicking and dragging the mouse left or right will adjust those particular tones, giving the user a lot of control.
Having this tool as an non-destructive adjustment layer is icing on the cake.
Posted by David Bostedo on August 9, 2008 at 12:12 PM
If you don't have CS3, there's the Channel mixer in prior versions, or if you have Elements and don't have CS (like me) here's a little technique that's pretty good :
1) Create a Hue/Sat adjustment layer on top of your image layer
2) Create an all black layer above the H/S layer and change the blending mode to "color". This will make your image greyscale, the same as if you just moved the saturation slider to 0.
3) Now adjust the Hue/Saturation layer to change the tones to something you like.
Posted by Ernie Atkins on August 9, 2008 at 1:52 PM
The technique described by John is also available in Lightroom 1.x and, of course, the newest release Lightroom 2.0
Ernie
Posted by Dan Borzynski on August 9, 2008 at 3:16 PM
David's technique works really well. It is my primary method for BW conversions. CS3 actually has a tool that does exactly the same thing, but with one easy to use interface.
If you have channels in whatever version of Photoshop you are using, sometimes a good starting place is to pick one of the three channels as a starting point and work with that channel exclusively as you would a traditional BW negative in the darkroom, deleting the other two channels.
Posted by Mitch Moraski on August 10, 2008 at 5:44 PM
Hi Mike,
Under adjustments you have a B and W menu. Open convert and use the color sliders. Of couse you can also use many other options such as contrast, levels, curves and such. There are probably additional techniques using lab color, CMYK, calculations and such, but this appears to be the easiest route to go. In addition, having a high quality print output will help. If your a big PS user I highly recommend joining NAPP. It's well worth the investment.
Mitch Moraski
E. Montpelier, VT
Posted by Mike Sellers on August 12, 2008 at 7:43 AM
Thanks for all the tips
Posted by Kelly Rowe on August 14, 2008 at 8:09 PM
Discussion
7 repliesMike
Having this tool as an non-destructive adjustment layer is icing on the cake.
1) Create a Hue/Sat adjustment layer on top of your image layer
2) Create an all black layer above the H/S layer and change the blending mode to "color". This will make your image greyscale, the same as if you just moved the saturation slider to 0.
3) Now adjust the Hue/Saturation layer to change the tones to something you like.
Ernie
If you have channels in whatever version of Photoshop you are using, sometimes a good starting place is to pick one of the three channels as a starting point and work with that channel exclusively as you would a traditional BW negative in the darkroom, deleting the other two channels.
Under adjustments you have a B and W menu. Open convert and use the color sliders. Of couse you can also use many other options such as contrast, levels, curves and such. There are probably additional techniques using lab color, CMYK, calculations and such, but this appears to be the easiest route to go. In addition, having a high quality print output will help. If your a big PS user I highly recommend joining NAPP. It's well worth the investment.
Mitch Moraski
E. Montpelier, VT