Converting colour images to B&W

So far I've only taken pics in colour - and my camera does not have a B&W setting - but I'd like to convert some of my images to black and white, but am unsure as to the 'best' way to acheive this.

As I'm only just getting to grips with Photoshop I'd appreciate some advice, especially so for JPEG images as I've got quite a few that would make for good monochrome pics.

TIA.

R

Which version of Photoshop do you have?

Hi Ralph,

If you are not adverse to books can I suggest this one :-

Not sure of this link stuff but it is called Black and White by Michael Freeman and is on Amazon for about £11.50

book

Paul C

I use Photoshop CS and this is how I do it:

Open your image and make sure you have your Layers/Channels Pallette open

Image>Mode>Lab Color

Open the Channel Pallette and click on Lightness

Image>Mode>Grayscale

It will ask you if you want to discard your others channels>click OK

That's it, you're done.

You can further tweek the image by adding a duplicate layer and then set the layer to Multiply and then adjust your opacity to taste.

You can also set you mode back to RGB after you convert and add an adjustment layer>color filter if you want to introduce a color cast.

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/bwfromcol.html

there is also a photoshop guys tutorial .. i suscribe via itunes .. it's very good .. but costs $1.99 now it is archived. I don't have my copy of that one still .. sorry. http://www.photoshopusertv.com/photoshoptv/110606_pstv.html

If you are using Photoshop there are LOADS of great tutorials online .. and ... if you are using something else I am sure you will find stuff either for that or that you can use the techniques in the other software.

How long is a piece of string? Here's a method to at least get your image to good starting point in Black and White.

In CS3

Open your file (RAW, .tif or .jpg) in Adobe Camera Raw. Move the saturation slider all the way to the left to desaturate the image. Then slide the Colour Temperature and Tint sliders around and you'll see the tones of the black and white image change relative to each other... like using different coloured filters when shooting on film. The other controls - contrast, recovery, brightness etc, etc can also be manipulated.

From there the sky's the limit. Books, tutorials, but best of all practice.

I would recommend another book as well. "The Print" by Ansel Adams. While the techniques are last century, the fundamentals of tonal placement are the same.

Simplest way. (CS)

Image>Adjustments>Desaturate

your image will now be BW but low contrast so now....

Image>Adjustments>Levels

and start having fun with the 3 sliders along the bottom of the histogram.

There are many other more involved methods which give you greater control over tones but this works fine.

two versions of the same file using the ACR starting point method described in post 6. This is from an 8bit film scan of a colour slide.

the advantage of this method is that you have control over the tone each colour reproduces, that way you can control separation of tones, not just the overall contrast.

Which version of Photoshop do you have?

It's version 8, according to the 'About Photoshop' tab, running on a Mac (if that helps).

R

I currently use bibble as a raw converter. there are some (free and paid ) plugins available) to convert to black and white and tone images. the plugin simulates film and paper separately.

her is a old 50-60's shot i dug up in my fathers B&W collection, but the shot is from me visiting Banff in 2006.....

here's a quick underwater image to illustrate ACR starting point method.

It's version 8, according to the 'About Photoshop' tab, running on a Mac (if that helps).

 

R

OK; any of the suggestions mentioned above will work. In CS3 there is a new Black and White Adjustment Layer that is actually quite good. Alternatively in PS8 I recommend you go to Layer - New Adjustment Layer - Channel Mixer. Click on Monochrome, and then you can then adjust the channels just like applying filters in black and white photography. This approach is fairly simple and provides quite a lot of control.

As you can see there are lots of ways to do it.

I 'd say using the HSL/grayscale tab in cs3 raw gives you the ability to make incredible fine adjustments, in each color, much more then just RGB

OK; any of the suggestions mentioned above will work. In CS3 there is a new Black and White Adjustment Layer that is actually quite good. Alternatively in PS8 I recommend you go to Layer - New Adjustment Layer - Channel Mixer. Click on Monochrome, and then you can then adjust the channels just like applying filters in black and white photography. This approach is fairly simple and provides quite a lot of control.

As you can see there are lots of ways to do it.

Yep, I also use Channel Mixer

OK; any of the suggestions mentioned above will work. In CS3 there is a new Black and White Adjustment Layer that is actually quite good. Alternatively in PS8 I recommend you go to Layer - New Adjustment Layer - Channel Mixer. Click on Monochrome......

Hi,

I got as far as Channel Mixer, but there isn't a Monochrome option.

This is what I get:

R

Hi,

 

I got as far as Channel Mixer, but there isn't a Monochrome option.

Photoshop 8 is CS, Photoshop 9 is CS2 and Photoshop 10 is CS3, up to 7 they just used numbers. You probably also see Photoshop CS in the about box