By forrest/Forrest (2,667) 
on January 30, 2007 9:14:42 PM CST
Black and White ... Introduction
Conversion Methods
Quick, Fast; in a Hurry
More Options
Going Further
Ansel Adams Zone System
Black and White ... Introduction
Why black and white? Monochrome has a special place in photography, having endured a century and a half, changing from a limitation of the medium into a genre. Black and white photos look timeless. They make exposure, tonality, and contrast more important, often easier to use to create a dramatic photograph.
Why color, then? Black and white isn't better, it's just different, better suited to some photo than others. Shooting in color lets you decide whether the photo should be color or monochrome after you've seen both, instead of before you make the exposure.
Conversion Methods
There are many ways to skin a cat, and methods for converting a color image to black and white fall into two camps. Either you're:
- In a hurry
- A perfectionist
Not surprisingly, the fast methods don't require much on your part.
Quick, Fast; in a Hurry
You can get a look at an image with no color in seconds either by selecting Image -> Mode -> Grayscale or Image -> Adjustments -> Hue and Saturation from the menu system. If you go with hue / saturation, pull the saturation slider down to -100. Or, for an old, faded look, try a value in the ballpark of -80.
More Options
The Channel Mixer is one of the more useful tools in Photoshop. You can fix color casts, add saturation or take it away, and you can use it to make beautiful black and whites ( especially in situations when you would have used a red filter over b/w film ).
Photoshop represents color by breaking it into red, green, and blue components ( unless you've changed to a different color mode, like CMYK or LAB ). Because digital cameras and scanners use RGB color filters to determine the color of every pixel, you'll see very different black and white images in each color channel.
Normally the green channel will have the most detail, and the least noise; blue is often darker than the others; red tends to look very dramatic, especially with a cloudy sky in the frame.
The channel mixer lets you create a single, monochrome image by combining different amounts of the color channels that make your image up. You can use a single channel in its entirety, or blend them together in different ways, deciding how much influence to take from each.
In the example at left, the red channel shows the best sky, and although it's hard to see at this size, the green channel holds more detail, especially in the trees. A mix of mostly red with some green added yields the best results here.
Going Further
The channel mixer can be run in an adjustment layer instead of applying the changes directly to your image. With a little bit of masking, you could in fact take the sky entirely from the red channel, and the foreground from a combination of green and blue. This can be time consuming, but lets you set the tone and contrast of every part of your scene.
Selective color is a natural next step - the technique of removing color from most, but not all, of a photograph. Use an adjustment layer to turn the image black and white, and then paint over its mask to restore color to the parts you want to highlight. For more sample photos investigating these techniques, see Black and White Conversion on ForrestCroce.com.
Ansel Adams Zone System
This article is long enough already, but wouldn't be complete without mentioning Ansel Adams; if you can find The Negative it's highly recommended, otherwise see Zone System on Wikipedia.
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From dcartami/Dan (132)
on May 6, 2007 1:41:54 PM CDT
Channel Mixer is certainly a great tool for converting to black and white. However, I find that these conversions introduce (often unacceptable) high levels of noise into the photo. I would appreciate any info on how to deal with this?
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From forrest/Forrest (2,667)
on May 21, 2007 3:03:44 AM CDT
I've found the least noise in the green channel, so when there's enough of it to bother me, I wind up doing two conversions and then using layer masking to put them back together, using the green conversion in areas with a lot of noise, and the more attractively balanced version everywhere else.
Sort of unrelated, but a tip for dealing with noise in general is to copy your image to a new channel, run the find edges tool, then load a selection from the channel you just built, feather it a little, then invert it, and finally apply a slight gaussian blur in a new channel. It's really a lot easier than I'm sure I made it sound.
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From aymx/Aymx (1,759)
on July 29, 2007 1:41:25 PM CDT
Well, if u use RAW format pictures, u will have much less noise when u do B&W
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From secondmatter/Abhijit (4,435) 
on June 8, 2007 5:03:53 PM CDT
I usually use this technique to produce the BW image from the color version.
I keep one layer from each of the following
1. A good RGB version, normally the base layer
2. A good channel for skin tone - mostly RED channel, sometimes green
3. Channel Mixer - a pretty good one
4. Calculations - for experimenting
5. LAB conversion - mostly the best
Once I have all those layers I select (using layer mask) which part to take from where and see how the whole image fit together. Before using the mask normally I would blur, sharpen, fix contast, tonality etc. of certain layers if necessary. I keep the RGB layer for selective coloring.
I find BW takes more time than the color version. I am sure most professionals use various other methods/techniques to produce exceptional results. I am very much eager to learn that.
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From aymx/Aymx (1,759)
on July 29, 2007 6:19:47 AM CDT
Abhijit your method seems interesting and I think you explain it more, so why don't you write a full article about your method in ur free time? It would be very helpful.
Thanx,
Aymx
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From dohunt/Damon (224)
on July 30, 2007 2:16:53 PM CDT
I certainly agree. You've given us something to think about. Please continue in a new article. Lately I've been using DxO filmpacks for good simple conversion options.
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From forrest/Forrest (2,667)
on August 30, 2007 1:32:22 AM CDT
"I find BW takes more time than the color version. I am sure most professionals use various other methods/techniques to produce exceptional results. I am very much eager to learn that."
I agree. And it's really counter-intuitive ... it seems like it color introduces so many more variables that it should naturally take more time to make a color image look just right. But that just doesn't seem to be the case. I think some of it has to do with the Ansel Adams and other fantastic, masterful black and white photography we've all seen ... maybe that raises the bar subconsciously?
And I've also got to agree with you about the red channel usually being the best for skin tones. But could I talk you into expanding on your calculations technique ... step 4 in your b/w workflow?
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From secondmatter/Abhijit (4,435)
on December 30, 2007 4:58:30 AM CST
Sorry for being late in replying.
With regard to the calculations, you basically select this submenu from the image menu and select the RGB layer(s) you want to manipulate in both source 1 & 2. Then you experiment with the Blending, Opacity, Mask & Invert controls. You can get really creative with these 4 controls.
I do play with the Duotone mode at the end and that gives endless options for the tones.
Hope that helps. Let me know if anyone needs any further details.
Regards,
Abhijit
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