Black and White in Photoshop

Chris Messineo

Chris Messineo

Veteran
Contest #15 is for Black and White photos. The last time I took black and white pictures I used black and white film. :(

I understand there are many different ways to convert your digital color pictures to black and white in PhotoShop. Can anyone tell me what are some of pros and cons of each? Is there a recommended method?

Thanks,

Chris
 
I'm no expert, but what I usually do:

1-Most of the time, I use the in-camera B&W and in-camera filters (I like green for portraits). When I do that, I take it in RAW... so I can fiddle with it some more and still have the option of going back to color if I want.

2-The rest of the time, I use the channel mixer and play around with it until I get the look I want.

I used the channel mixer in the photo of the trumpet in the macro contest. I actually took that in color knowing that I wanted to convert it with the channel mixer. The B&W photo of my daughter in the rule of thirds contest was done in-camera.

I'm addicted to B&W by the way (whether my method is the best or not :)).

Chad

On edit: I forgot to add... after I converted the trumpet picture, I used variations to add a slight tint to it.
 
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I don't know if my Nikon D50 can even do B/W in camera. Time to dust off the manual and open it I guess.

Also, I've never used the Channel Mixer in PhotoShop. I guess I have a lot to learn this week-end.

Chris
 
CMessineo said:
I don't know if my Nikon D50 can even do B/W in camera. Time to dust off the manual and open it I guess.

Also, I've never used the Channel Mixer in PhotoShop. I guess I have a lot to learn this week-end.

Chris
Click to expand...

I can't help with the D50 since I'm one of the odd-ball Canon guys :) but I bet it has a B&W setting.

But concerning the channel mixer... you open the channel mixer and click "monochrome" and just play with the sliders. It opens with red at 100%. You can move that down to 0 and then set another channel to 100% to see what that looks like... and so on. Depending on what colors are in your photo, certain channels will look better than others. You'll most likely need a mix to get it just right... they should add up to somewhere in the neighborhood of 100% (for example 25% red, 50% green, 25% blue), but it doesn't have to be exactly 100%.

Hope that helps.

Chad
 
CR_OPSO said:
But concerning the channel mixer... you open the channel mixer and click "monochrome" and just play with the sliders. It opens with red at 100%. You can move that down to 0 and then set another channel to 100% to see what that looks like... and so on. Depending on what colors are in your photo, certain channels will look better than others. You'll most likely need a mix to get it just right... they should add up to somewhere in the neighborhood of 100% (for example 25% red, 50% green, 25% blue), but it doesn't have to be exactly 100%.

Hope that helps.

Chad
Click to expand...
That helps a lot.

Thanks,

Chris

p.s. uhrgl, I will play with that desaturate as well.
 
A lot of the portraits I do are in black and white (plus a lot of wedding photography)

Filters are certainly the best way to progress and I even did a full on test to show the results of different filters... it's burried somewhere in this section.

The easiest way to do it is with an orange filter or red filter and then use a black and white gradient map in photoshop... this gives you much more stark results than simply desaturating (which makes things look flat). Let me find that thread for ya...

Here it is: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=68987 but I took the file off my server... If I find it I will reupload it.
 
Jeremy,

Great info. If you can reupload that file, I would love to see it.

I actually think I might have an old red filter hanging around somewhere.

Chris
 
I found the original test results...

Essentially I tested these filters out (yellow, orange, green) under flourescent lighting, natural light indoors, and natural light outdoors. I also have a picture of a person so you can see how people look with these filters.


So here are the resuluts:

Straight out of camera under different conditions:
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Interior Flo Basic.jpg
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Outside Basic.jpg
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Person Basic.jpg
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Shadows Basic.jpg

Auto Color Contrast Curves in photoshop:
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Interior Flo Auto.jpg
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Outside Auto.jpg
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Person Auto.jpg
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Shadows Auto.jpg

Desaturated:
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Interior Flo Desaturate.jpg
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Outside Desaturate.jpg
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Person Desaturate.jpg
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Shadows Desaturate.jpg

Gradient Mapping:
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Interior Flo Gradient.jpg
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Interior Flo Gradient.jpg
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Person Gradient.jpg
http://www.stffilms.com/Pictures/Yellow Orange Green/Shadows Gradient.jpg


It was a rather in depth test but it's all done and complete...


Here is a side by side for the person difference between desaturating (I don't like) and gradient mapping (I do like)

Person%20Desaturate.jpg
Person%20Gradient.jpg



Ultimately my conclusion was simple, for 90% of lighting the orange filter with gradient mapping works best... Check the test.

OK, I gotta get to the airport because I am officiall on vacation!
 
Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions. In the end, I found the channel mixer option was the most flexible and gave me the best results for turning my color image to black and white.

Chris
 
jeremy thanks for the tip on using the gradient map to go to b&w. i had no idea you could do this and even without the orange filter it makes a difference than using the desaturate. now i gotta find me an orange filter :)
 
Great... glad I could help! (I'm going to have to play around with Jeremy's method... just haven't had time yet)

Chad
 
Just a note on Channel Mixer:

Total % does not have to be 100. Mix to your liking. I'm usually closer to 130, but it depends on the image. Just mix to your liking, ignore the numbers. I almost always start out my entering 50-50-20 and mixing from there.

-GageFX
 
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