Photoshop pro tip: Turn a color photo into a stunning black and white

By Donovan Myers
Posted on Sep 23, 2007

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In the age of color photos and mega-pixel digital cameras, black and white photography has become pretentious and artsy. But, good news, now you can create pretentious and artsy black and whites from your color digital photos.

For most people, the first and only step of turning your color photo into a black and white is selecting Mode -> Grayscale from the Image menu item in Photoshop.

This results in an okay black and white version of your photo.

However, the real reason that photographers choose to use black and white is a level of detail that you can't get with color photos.

Rather than using the grayscale method described above, to get truly artsy black and whites: use the Channel Mixer (Image -> Adjustments -> Channel Mixer).

The above is the initial setup of the Channel Mixer, but since we are doing a black and white, you want to click Monochrome checkbox. Once you have checked Monochrome, you can drag the red green and blue sliders to make your photo more artsy.

I have moved the sliders up to increase the whites in of the lights on the Chinese lantern. You could also increase the Constant slider to make more of the background visible.

The side by side comparison shows the stunning results that can be achieved.

A better option is built into Photoshop CS3

It's called, easily enough: Black & White (Image -> Adjustments - Black & White).

This adjustment is very similar to the Channel Mixer with the sliders, however you have greater control over the photo using sliders for Reds, Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues, and Magentas as well as being able to choose from several presets.

Taking it further

Some Photoshoppers use the newly created black and white to add more depth to their original color photo. You simply use your black and white photo as a layer that sits on top of your original color photo and choose a blending mode that looks best.

In this example, I used Soft Light to bring out the contrast in this photo of Lucy. The after image almost has the look of film compared to the more dull before image.