Turning photos from color to stunning black and white
Ivan | Sat, 2004-08-14 08:24You want to make a grayscale image from a color one, but the black and white image becomes flat and boring? There is a good reason for it. Different colors with the same brightness look similar when converted to grayscale. Look a the color strips of Red, Green, Blue turning into the same exact grey below when using the simple Image/Mode/Grayscale command. Note how the sand and the sky is so similar in color on the image below.
In cases when you have an image with blue sky and yellow sand, or orange flowers surrounded with green leafs, you need to use the Channel Mixer... layer effect to create your black and white images. Open the layers window, and click the fourth icon from the left to open the Layer Effects menu and select Channel Mixer... In the channel mixer you can simulate what professional photographers achieve with their color filters to make dramatic black and white images. By mixing more of the blue channel into your image the sky will become brighter for example. If you need to bring out your orange flowers from the green background, you would need to decrease red and increase the green source channels. Experiment to achieve the best result for your image. Note how the RGB color samples turn into different levels of grey on the sample image below.
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great tip!
Yup, good tip. By the way for others that may not have seen it before Fred Miranda has a great Photoshop automation tool for creating absolutely amazing black/white photos from color originals. His automation effectively does everything referenced here, but with a few extra bells and whistles. Everything from controling simulated Tri-X film grain, to color filters, etc. I purchaed it (something like $10-15 if I remember). I have a sample of what I did with it on my site if you're interested.
Hi
There's a third conversion technique described at "Design by Fire". http://www.designbyfire.com/000100.htmlIt also creates stunning B/W images from color images. Maybe you want to give it a try.
Regards
jr
Bummer. I followed the thread to the Design by Fire site, and it in turn points to a site that I had never heard of before, Imaging Revue however, they want $$$ to view the site. Bummer. The steps at the Design by Fire site are quite nice. But I think I'll stick with the Fred Miranda automation (look for the link directly to the automation in that article). I dunno, maybe I'm lazy but I like its output and it is far more easy to work with; no forgetting steps along the way, etc. By no means am I discounting the action conversion process above, I just like quick/easy. My two cents.
Good tip to post. This is why I have been doing all shooting on color film for a while...I can post-process the B&W I want. Of course, this top becomes even more useful with digital cameras, which always shoot in color. (Yes, many digital cameras have a black-and-white mode, but you might not like the results, and you don't get to control the conversion as you would with Channel Mixer.)
More than a tip its a great explanation for a learner. Like the way u explained what actually happens when converting to grayscale mode.
thanx and keep up the good work