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April 30, 2005
COLOUR TO BLACK & WHITE
SOME DIGITAL CAMERAS have a black and white option in the image settings and this usually does a fair job of producing a monochrome image. However, a better way to do it is in Photoshop.
By doing the conversion in the computer the original colour image is saved for other uses and there is greater control over the black and white image. What's more there are times when a blah! colour image can be turned into an excellent B & W.
So, do this ...
1. Open the colour image in Photoshop.
2. Go Image/Mode/Lab Color
3. Open Channels on the Channels palette and click on Lightness
4. Go Image/Mode/Grayscale and click OK for "discard color information"
5. Go Layer/Duplicate layer
6. In the Layers palette change the mode from Normal to Multiply
7. You now have a very dark monochrome image. Click on the Opacity slider in the Layers palette and reduce the opacity. As you move the slider up and down the scale the intensity of the image will change. At the zero end the top layer will be totally transparent and the image washed out. At the 100% end the image will be too dark. Somewhere in between will be just right.
8. Go Layer/Flatten image
9. Make fine adjustments in Curves [Ctrl M]
There is another way to convert colour images to black and white — use Fred Miranda's BW Workflow Pro, downloadable for U$29.90. This plugin automates the conversion process and has the added facility of a filter set to simulate red, orange, yellow, green etc filters as well as various duotone conversions, including good old sepia.
Happy monochroming!
Posted by terry at April 30, 2005 02:22 PM
Comments
G’Day Terry and Charles,
Firstly congratulations on getting the new website up and running, it’s certainly an improvement on all the other overseas digital photography sites I’ve seen. As for the B&W photos from digital cameras/Photoshop, how would they compare with those from my Pentax 645 film camera, using Agfapan 25 or Ilford Pan F? I somehow suspect not very favourably.
Best Regards,
Robert Ashman
Posted by: Robert Ashman at April 30, 2005 03:38 PM
Robert:
It would take a lot of pixels to produce the same resolution as your Pentax 645. I have some B and W pics on the wall taken with a Mamiya 645 that I once owned, using FP4, and I can't approach that quality with digital.
On the other hand I no longer have to puddle around in toxic chemicals in the dark. And digital images from a SLR such as the Nikon D70 are pretty good -- better in some ways than film and not so good in other ways.
Terry L
Posted by: Terry at April 30, 2005 04:33 PM
I convert many colour images to black and white and have found your suggestions to produce excellent results. I now have a Photoshop action for steps 2-6 which reduces the time required considerably, however, I find that making adjustment to Levels [Ctrl L] is equally, if not more, important to the changes made to Curves at step 9.
Posted by: Rob Berry at May 13, 2006 03:14 AM