3 ways to Black and White
(Plus one more thrown in for good measure.)
1. Suck the colour out
Bulling all the colour out using the Desaturate tool will certainly give you a monochrome image, but all colours are treated equally, and the result can be flat.
Try it: Image > Desaturate
2. Let Photoshop suck the colour out.
This lets Photoshop make a pre-set guess at the value of the various colours in the image to create shades of black and white.
Try it: Image > Mode > Grayscale
3. Control how the colour gets sucked out.
By setting the intensity of colours as you convert to Black and White, you control the tones in the monochrome image. There are 2 ways to do this, depending on which version of Photoshop you have.
Try it: Image > Adjustments > Black and White. (There are some fun presets in here to look at too.)
For older versions of Photoshop, try Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer. Be sure to check the “Monochrome” option.
These three methods are just scratching the surface, but will give you the fundamentals for understanding how colours in an image will affect the final tones and composition of a black and white image.
Posted on February 18th, 2010