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6 ways to go Black & White in CS4

I constantly get asked which is the best way to convert an image to Black & White? The answer is the one that suits your images the best! In this screencast I will show you 6 ways to make your image Black & White. There are actually 9 different techniques available, but I thought I would stick to the ones that focus on Photoshop directly, rather than dipping into Adobe Camera RAW or converting to Greyscale. Enjoy!

Although doing a straight desaturation is not the most pleasing Black & White technique out of the box. It does give you a degree of flexibility that converting to greyscale won’t mainly because by desaturating your image you are staying within the RGB colour and mode and this opens up all of Photoshop’s potential as it is an RGB Bit Map editor after all.

01_desaturate

Using Desaturate - © Stuart Little

So don’t discount using a straight desaturation technique, especially if you are doing a composite and require to work on the image a lot more then going for a good Black & White. Remember the shortcut is Shift+Command+U (MAC) or Shift+Control+U (PC).

Black & White Adjustment Layer - © Stuart Little

Using a Black & White Adjustment Layer - © Stuart Little

I used to prefer creating my Black & Whites with a colorized Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer because it allowed me to get a warm tone within the image. (Not quite sepia but not that neutral either). Now, however, I can do the same style of Black & White and have even more control with the Black and White Adjustment layer technique. You do have to be mindful of the specular highlights but thats easy to tame and you have a full color spectrum of tones to dip into.

Now before all you fans of ACR and Lightroom start commenting that you convert via the RAW converter! and its better, I know, me to, but today this post is focusing on what can be done within Photoshop, rather than solely Adobe Camera RAW.

There are no real rights or wrongs to how you convert your image to Black & White, all the methods demonstrated in the screencast are valid. But just remember that non of them are a one click effect and every image will always need further tonal adjustments via curves or levels etc…Enjoy! >

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  1. Clifford Canty says:
    September 10, 2009 at 7:41 pm

    Thanks for another great tutorial. I use gradient mapping myself and then go to channel mixer.

  2. Stuart Little says:
    September 10, 2009 at 7:48 pm

    I must admit I have a soft spot for the gradient map technique!

  3. Robert Brook says:
    September 14, 2009 at 8:46 pm

    Another great video tutorial Stu . How about some more advanced techniques for creating B&W like calculations for creating different mixes from channels.

  4. Stuart Little says:
    September 15, 2009 at 6:34 am

    Will do Rob, look out for the screen cast on Thursday that uses Channels to create an alpha mask.

  5. Sam Coran says:
    September 20, 2009 at 2:40 pm

    Stumbled upon your website while browsing Studiolighting.net.

    I love the simple look and very informative posts you have. I’ll be saving this link in my EVERNOTE making me a frequent viewer of your site.

    Cheers!

    sam

  6. Stuart Little says:
    September 20, 2009 at 3:15 pm

    Thanks Sam, for you comment. We look forward to having you here as a regular viewer. :)

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