Apr

Turning a Photo Black and White

Written by Neil Galloway

Making a photo black and white is a faily simple process. I used to just use the grayscale option in Photoshop, but it doesn't always do a good job of it. Blonde hair can be too light or other features will not show up properly. I will explain the method I use to have a bit more control over the final picture.

I use Photoshop for all my editing so these instructions pertain to that.

Find a photo you want to convert to grayscale and open it up in Photoshop. For the purposes of this tutorial I am going to use the photo below. This is the same photo I used for my article Correcting Colors in Photographs Using Photoshop.

The Photo

Here is the photo. Notice the baby has light colored hair and their is a bright light being cast from the left side of the photo. It keeps his face bright on that side and there is a contrast as you move across.

Grayscale

My first impulse would be to just convert it to grayscale. This can be done by going to Image -> Mode -> Grayscale. Refer to the screenshot on the below.

Here is the result. Now this isn't bad. Personally, I wanted it a tad lighter and the infant's skin has too even a tone across it. Doesn't really reflect the color we saw in the original photo. But I still want to keep his light colored hair dark.

Time for Saturation Layers in Photoshop

Let us use saturation layers now. This will give us control over the darkness of the various colors in this photo. First, we need to create two saturation layers on the photo. Refer to the screenshot at right.

Now double click on the graph icon of the top most saturation layer (the last one you created). It will open the dialog you see in the screenshot ot the left.

Adjust the saturdation to 0 or all the way to the left. This will turn the image grayscale. Click Ok after that. Basically the same thing Photoshop does. However, it looks a bit bland like the Grayscale photo we did above.

Now, double click on the graph symbol on the first saturation layer you created. This one will control the individual color tones. You can select the color of choice from the picklist. Then adjust the brightness for each one. You will notice some color choices don't affect the photo at all, where other ones have a dramatic effect.

I personally chose yellow and reduced the brightness substantially. This darkens blonde hair and his shirt somewhat. Secondy, I chose red and adjusted it down as well. This put some more contrast back into his skin and face.

Here is the final picture below. The original color photo, the saturation level adjusted photo, and a Photoshop Grayscale photo.

Original	Saturation Levels	Grayscale

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Category: Blogging

1 Comments

Wes Says:
2007-04-05 17:19:31
If you are already at the Adjustment Layers, try going to Channel Mixer. Setting the output to be Monochrome, and use:

Red 20-30%
Green 60-70%
Blue 20-30%

Apparently the Human eye is really good at distinguishing gradients (dynamic range) in the