Wonderful Tutorial for Black and White Conversions

a tutorial written by a fellow Cafemom member

Grayscale Image

Black & White Conversion w/ Chocolate Duotone
(skip duotone step in the tutorial for simple black and white)

I learned this method from another photographer on another board I participate in, and it is my absolute favorite....her photography absolutely inspires me! Give this method a whirl....I know it seems like a lot of steps, but once you become proficient with it, it's no biggie.....MUCH better than ol' grayscale! I use PS 7, so it should work with PS7, CS, CS2, and CS3.....I'm assuming it will work with PS Elements, but no guarantees.....as far as PAINT.NET and GIMP, I've never used those, so I have NO clue....if it doesn't work with those, try googling b&w conversion methods for those programs and you'll probably find some great info!

Here is how to do a b/w conversion using Lightness Channels. It's how I do my conversions because I find it's the easiest way to bring out the luminosity in skin tones, especially babies and children. Gradient map is a good tool, but I find that my images look a lot more flat with gradient map than they do with Channels.

First, I switch my image mode to Lab Color (Image> Mode> Lab Color). That just divides the color of your image into channels. Click on the Channels tab and you will see that you now have Lab, Lightness, A and B channels. Select the Lightness channel and convert it to grayscale (Image> Mode> Grayscale). Click yes to delete the other channels.

Now this next step isn't a necessity and probably won't work with every image (although I have never found one I don't do it with). I now make the image Duotone (Image> Mode> Duotone) with a golden brown in it. Ink 1, I make black, and Ink 2, I choose a golden brown color, but really any color of brown will work nice. Hit OK (you won't see really any difference just yet). If you'd rather not add any other tone, just skip that step and continue on.

Now, click back over to the Layers tab, and add a levels adjustment layer (Layer> New Adjustment Layer> Levels) and pull the right slider over to the left until you get the look you want. Then add a curves layer (Layer> New Adjustment Layer> Curves) and pull the curves until you get the look you want. I find that a very slight S shape looks beautiful. I also find that it helps to make both layers pretty bright, almost so it looks stupidly over-bright and blown and click OK. Then use the fill or opacity sliders to pull back on them instead of fiddling with the curves and levels themselves. Make sense? Now you flatten, convert the image back to RGB. Think you're done yet? Nope, ha ha! If you had made your image duotone before, open up hue/saturation and adjust the saturation. This will finally bring out some of that brown tone you added in the duotone earlier. I swear THIS is the step that really makes the black and white so beautiful. I usually pull the saturation up to about 30, give or take to give it that very, very subtle hue. You don't want it to be sepia, just very subtle.

And that's it. LOL.....clear as mud? Seriously....play with it. I promise you'll love it. Once you get used to it, it becomes second nature. I actually recorded it as an action so I can just run it without going through all of the steps.....makes it super quick and easy!