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I am not an expert, but some thoughts, after experimenting with a few methods in Photoshop: Desaturation, Channel Mixer, and not being very happy with the results, I purchased Convert to B&W Pro from the Image Factory. I am very happy with the results, especially for printing.

I have a book on digital black and white that I have been meaning to read, so maybe I'll start so I can pass on any new information.

ThanKs Rob. We wait for your readings

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Coming from a group home page (?)

There is also a very good plugin for the gimp... I'll try to write up some stuff as well :-)

Thanks to you too, Nils

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Coming from a group home page (?)

Making B&W Post #1 – Desaturation and Grayscale

This is the first post in a series that will work through the ways I learned to convert colour images to black and white.

Disclaimer: I only work with Photoshop, so I apologise to all my ipernity friends who use other image enhancing programs. I hope this might be still be of some use to you.

The first of the two simplest ways to make a black and white image from a colour image is the Desaturation control.

Image – Adjustments – Desaturate

This removes the colour information, but you are still left with the tonal range of a colour image. It generally produces a flat, dull picture without the ‘punch’ of a good black and white image. And doing it this way immediately changes pixels in the image.

If you want to use the Desaturate method, it is much better to use an adjustment layer.

Layer – New Adjustment Layer – Hue/Saturation and click OK.

Then slide the Saturation slider all the way to the left (-100) and click OK. No pixels are harmed until you flatten the image. (Right click on any layer, then select Flatten Image.) You can remove the layer at any time prior to this by dragging the layer to the rubbish bin at the bottom of the Layer palette.

The grayscale method: Image – Mode – Grayscale, converts the image to a monochrome image using a 256-step grayscale. This usually provides a better result than just removing the colour via desaturate, but it doesn’t give you much room to make any further adjustments.

With only 256 tonal steps to play with, it is very easy to blow highlights out to pure white, or block shadows up to solid black. Also this method instantly destroys precious pixels in your image.

The quality of the black and white image that results from either of these two methods relies heavily on the quality of the original image. Any problems will probably be magnified by the conversion.

If anyone has any tips or tricks for improving these two quick and dirty conversion methods, please feel free to add them to the comments.

In the next post in this series I’ll look at using the Channel Mixer for a black and white conversion.

With picasa


Is anyone could give me (constructive) critics with this BW please
i'd like to learn

After having gone through the same experiments as Rob Young described in his first post I came across a tutorial on the net, which I found to be very helpful in the sense that it gave me a good bw conversion to start with and some pretty nice ways to control the final picture.

As I haven't been able to find it again, I'll just describe how it works step by step. ATTENTION: I'm working with a German version of Photoshop and therefore some of the English names of Menus might be wrong. If you find some errors, please do not hesitate to correct.


1. Convert your image to LAB color mode: Image > Mode > Lab

2. Go to the Channels palette and select the Lightness channel by clicking on it.

3. Convert the Lightness channel to greyscale: Image > Mode > Greyscale > Click OK when asked if you want to get rid of the other channels

4. Make a selection of the ligth parts of the image: Go to the Channels palette and CTRL-click the channel

5. Invert the selection: Select > Invert

6. Create a new black layer: Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color > Select Black (RGB=0,0,0)

7. Set the opacity of the new layer to 50% for a start.

8. Duplicate the Background layer.

9. Run a Highpass Filter on the new layer (I use a radius of 4,8 for a 6mpix image)

10. Set the opacity of the new layer to 25% and the blend mode to hard light.


This gives you a bw conversion with an easy way to control the blacks by changing the opacity of the black layer and the edge sharpness and lights by changing the opacity of the Highpass layer.
In addition to that you might want to add a curves or levels layer to further tweak the conversion.

I used this method for almost all images in this set (www.ipernity.com/doc/15119/album/29539) and liked it a lot for the ease with which I was able to get these conversions.

Many thanks for your contribution

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Coming from a group home page (?)

I think this was perhaps the method you were using?

www.blackandwhitedigital.com/Convert/Manual/gorman.html

I use it quite a lot, very easy to create as an Action in Photoshop.

I still use Picasa quite often too, I tend to boost Highlights and Shadows and then use the Filtered BW option, choosing the best colour for the image.

Even more ways to go about it. Thanks very much.

I often rely on my camera to do the conversion for me which can give you a good time/result trade-off.
My default setting when shooting B&W in camera is maxing contrast and sharpness. This creates higher contrast B&W photos.
Sometimes in your camera there may also be the option to select some filters. Mine has the option of a yellow, orange, red or green filter. Generally a filter brightens tones that it stands for (a yellow filter brightens yellow) and darkens the opposite colour tone on the colour wheel the most. The red, orange and yellow filters brighten e.g. skin tones and darken blue tones such as the sky. Red has generally the strongest effect and yellow the weakest. The green filter brightens green and darkens red tones, if you use this many details in a face, such as skin texture, hairs and those "spots" that we try to cover usually will come forward much more.

Sometimes shooting in camera B&W allows you to see a scene a bit different and things come forward that you do not easily see in colour.

Here are some pictures that were shot directly B&W (pushing contrast even more in PP):
www.ipernity.com/doc/donandre/1870272
u1.ipernity.com/u/5/F9/DB/1760249.d90ec6461.m.jpg
and the album here:
www.ipernity.com/doc/donandre/album/47629