Converting Color Photos to Black and White Using Photoshop
Posted by Dr. Cason on Sunday, June 29th, 2008
Since I don’t know much about Photoshop and color conversion to black and white, I surfed the web looking for a site. There’s a lot out there to choose from but I found digital Photography School very helpful. Using their How to Convert Color Digital Images to Black and White Ones tutorial I was able to convert the color image to the black and white as seen below. I used the channel mixer option because I thought it was the easiest for a beginner such as myself. I stayed with the simple R:70% G:30% and B:5% as suggested by the author. They had other suggestions to make the image even better but honestly I couldn’t do it because Jacob had woken up from his nap and was crawling in my lap intent on seeing the baby in the computer. So I just played a bit with contrast, brightening and sharpening and called it a day.
I like the final result but I think of myself as more of a color girl than black and white. What about you? Which do you prefer? The color or b&w photo of Jacob? Do you ever shoot in black and white or convert it post production? If you do convert them, which method is your favorite?
Filed in My Favorite Photos, The Joy of Photography |
Both photos are gorgeous!
I do like black and white very much, but in the top photo especially, I love how the color really captures the translucency and glow of Jacob’s baby skin. The depth and layers of color in the flesh tones are exquisite.
Can I ask what kind of camera you use? Both you and Melanie from Beanpaste take such outstanding photos - your photos of children literally take my breath away.
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I like it!
I have a fondness for B&W stemming from my high school photography class days. I am a bit sad to see film cameras going away since it was so fun to hang out in the dark room and fiddle with my pictures often making a great picture from a questionable negative. I suppose that digital has made it that sort of thing more accessible to people with out having to have the expense of a dark room and inhaling chemicals, but it was just more fun to me doing it the old fashioned way.
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I like the color better. It is a great shot. But I feel like the black and white somehow loses the depth and subtleties of shading. It looks flatter.
I like both, I often use different versions of the same picture. Sometimes a poor picture can be saved by converting to black and white or sepia.
I have to admit I am puzzled by the method of changing the color you described. It sounds like a tool for maybe really fine tuning a picture, I use either Picasa or Microsoft Picture It (both free programs) that have the options to turn them into black and white at the click of a button. (Picasa has more black and white options than the other.)
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1. Jozet- I agree about the luminosity of his skin. Precious. I have a Canon Rebel XTi which is my first step up from a digital point and shoot. I take the photos in the RAW file which just captures all the data then I convert it to a usable format using the Adobe Photoshop CS2.
2. Awesome Mom- I admit I always wanted to do photography but was so intimidated by the darkroom. It’s so nice now to be able to shoot and see the product immediately. I’m sure there are a lot of people who still like to manipulate the images the older way right? Do you know if they are still available?
3.Sarah- Very astute! The tutorial said that to make the image better I need to creat duplicate layers and then do some other post processing to help the flattening effect. I couldn’t find the options on photoshop before Jake came a crawlin’ I’ll have to go back and try again!
4. Buglady(White Hot)- See my comment above for Jozet. To use picasa or Microsoft picture you need to have the file in Jpeg. Since I have a DSLR, I choose the option of taking the photo in the RAW format I need to use Photoshop Raw file converter to change the photo to a jpeg. One advantage of using RAW is that it functions as a negative. If for example you take a photo in the wrong lighting or your white balance is off you can adjust the temperature and tint to your liking. Before I got this camera though I took TONS of photos with my point and shoot and adjusted it in Microsoft and really found some lovely images. I’ll have to do a post comparing the point and shoot with the DSLR and Microsoft with Photoshop.
I often find myself using a sepia tone or other monochromatic effect. Sometimes I go full-on black and white. I love how using either B&W or sepia gives any photo a timeless look to it.
Photoshop CS3 now has a simple convert to black and white under the “adjustments” drop-down menu. You can adjust your channels in there and then save your settings to apply the same look to other photos. For example, I had some photos I had taken at a civil war reenactment. I adjusted one photo and achieved a sepia look I REALLY liked. My plan is to enlarge and frame these photos and group them together. I knew I wouldn’t be able to reproduce those settings again, because I just playing with sliders, so I was able to save them and named it “Civil War Sepia” so now anytime I want to use that look on a photo, I click on that preset and it does the job for me.
I love photoshop and I love black and white. It smoothes out all of the little lumps and bumps.
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Hi Dr. Cason,
Both are beautiful pictures, and to get the full effect, I used my split screen. Looking at them side by side, I prefer the colored one.
I have played around a little with black and white. I have converted some scenery photos to black and white and got great results, but for people pictures, I do like sepia.
There are so many advances in photography it’s hard to stay on top of all of them.
Sheila - I was watching HGTV today and saw a very nice use of photographs I thought you might like to think about with your family.
The couple having their room redone had a “huge” amount of photographs they wished to have displayed in this room. With so many backgrounds, sizes, shapes, colors, this could have been very overwhelming.
Not to worry, Photoshop to the rescue. They took all of these photographs into sepia tones, and they all blended just beautifully (very artistic also) without being overwhelming. They did not go into detail how they did this, but I would be willing to bet by using Photoshop. The design team also painted the wall displaying these photographs with a very soft shade of brown, which was very becoming as well.
Just a nice idea I thought you might enjoy for displaying some of your photographs also.