Joel Tjintjelaar

As I explained in a previous article, there are quite some ways to convert images to black and white with Photoshop. Today I’m going to talk about two conversions that DO work and give you much more control and much better results than Desaturation and Grayscale.

First things first

Before I convert an image to black and white, I always make sure that my image looks correct in color and is properly exposed. There are two reasons I do this. First: a flat and underexposed image in color will also look flat and underexposed in black and white and it will take a lot more work during and after conversion to fix it. Very often these patches will be visible. And secondly: it gives me the option to choose which image I like more and it’s always interesting and helpful to compare the two images.

The best way to know if your image is properly exposed is to take a look at the histogram. The quickest way to open the histogram is by pressing CTRL+L, which opens Levels. You can make your changes right there by moving the sliders.

There are quite some basic corrections I use on the images I choose to edit. You can read more about them in this article INSERT LINK

Calculations

Open your image and go to Image > Calculations.

It will open up this menu:

— Calculations

You have several options, but you only really need to use 3 of them.

1. Channel under Source 1
2. Blending
3. Opacity

There are four options under Channel: Gray, Red, Green and Blue. But what does it do exactly? If you shoot in black and white with film for example, you can use colored filters to change the tones of an image. For example: if you would use a red filter, the reds would go lighter and the blues would go darker. And that is exactly what these options under Channel do: simulate those filters.

Under Blending you can choose which blending mode you’d like to choose, similar as in Layers.

Then there is the Opacity mode. Lower the opacity if you think that the applied effect is too much.

When converting to black and white in Photoshop with Calculations, I usually start off with these settings:

Channel: Gray
Blending: Normal
Opacity: 100%

With just these three settings you’ve got plenty of room to play around with your image. You might try simulating a color filter, which I usually do. Perhaps you want to change your Blending mode to Darken or Multiply to make your picture darker. Or maybe you want to hold the effect back a little: adjust your opacity.

There still is the Channel option under Source 2, you can use this also for more control over your conversion. The Channel reacts to whatever mode you’ve set under Blending. This is a more advanced option, it requires a lot of knowledge of blending modes. I recommend experimenting with just Channel (source 1), Blending and Opacity. Once you understand what these options exactly do, you’re ready to try Channel under source 2.

Be sure that the “preview” box is checked. That way you can immediately see the effect of your settings on your image.

As you can see, Calculations isn’t that hard to handle. But I do think it might be a little too abstract for beginners. If you are a beginner, achieving the desired effect might take a while and a lot of playing with the sliders. When you already know everything about filters and their effect and when you know everything about blending options, this tool will most definitely be helpful. I don’t really recommend using calculations unless you know what you’re doing. But please don’t let that stop you from experimenting with Calculations. Perhaps you might find it a very easy conversion method.

Black & White tool

— Photoshop Sliders

Photoshop has a tool that’s called “Black & White”. I guess that’s the standard tool Photoshop offers for converting your image to black and white. You can find it under Image Adjustments Black & White. It will bring up the following dialog:

But, is it any good?

First thing you’ll see is that you’ve got quite some options. There are 6 sliders and a presets menu, you can add a tint of color too.

Please note that your Preview box is checked. You will only see the effect of the sliders when that box is checked. The results of moving the sliders can only be seen in black and white.

This tool is really easy to use. All you have to do is move the sliders to the left or the right. Moving a slider to the right will result in making the corresponding color of your source image to become lighter, moving a slider to left will result in making that color darker. If you would move the Reds slider to the left, it would make the red parts of your image darker.

This is where the Black & White tool becomes better than the Calculations tool. With your dialog box still open, move your mouse cursor over your image. You’ll see that the cursor has changed into a pipette. Click with the left mouse button on any part of the image where you would like to change the tones. Now you’ll see that the pipette has changed in to a little hand on top of a slider. Keep your mouse button pressed in and move the mouse to the left or to the right to darken or brighten the tones you’ve selected.

Let’s say you have an image of a landscape and you would like to convert the blue sky to almost black. You could move your Blues or Cyans sliders to the left. But even better: You could just point your mouse on the image itself on the area with the sky and click and drag to the left or right.

There’s nothing more to it than clicking and dragging. You don’t even have to worry about those sliders in the Black & White dialog box.

So, is this tool any good? Yes, it is! There is just so much control and you only have to click and drag to get the desired effect on every part of the image separately! Everyone can use this tool, whether you are a beginner or a professional. This tool is very useful for everyone and gives you great results.

Concluding

Calculations and Black & White both are great tools in Photoshop, although I prefer the Black & White tool over the Calculations tool. If you are making your first step into editing photos to black and white with Photoshop, the Black & White tool probably is the best tool to start with. It’s just so easy, even if you are a complete beginner. Calculations might be a little too abstract for beginners, but once you completely understand it the results are good.

The next step

So, there you have it, a nice looking black and white photo. But this isn’t where it ends yet, at least, for me it doesn’t. There is a lot more we can do to make the picture from just “nice looking” to “mind blowing”. In the next tutorial I’ll explain three simple but very effective tools: dodging, burning and layer masks.

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