The best way to convert your photo to black and white

Introduction

We all know there are an endless number of ways to convert an image to black and white in Photoshop, and they’ve been written about over and over again for so long, that I’m not even gonna get into that. What I want to talk about today though is, the best, non-destructive tool of the trade in black and white conversion.

Before getting into this article, if you haven’t done so already take a look at my earlier post on how to take the right shot in camera to make a perfect photo once converted to black and white In-Camera Black and White Photography

Individual channels

As we all know, an RGB image mainly consists of 3 color channels. As the name implies, these of course are red, green, and blue. So how do we use those to creatively create the best black and white photo?

The first step for creating the perfect monochrome version of a photo is to assess the image colors. For that, I would strongly advice that you turn off the Show Channels in Color option in Photoshop so that color channels are displayed as grayscale. All you need to do is Go to Edit> Preferences> Interface and uncheck the option to Show Channels in Color. This switches off the red, green, and blue overlay that makes it difficult to assess the color information that is in each channel.

Having done that you can now cycle quickly through the color channels in the CHANNELS palette by clicking each channel’s eye icon in turn. This process is quick, and mainly has two purposes:

1. It will give you an idea about the characteristics of the 3 channels that make up your image. You will be able to assess what the final black and white photo would look like if you stress the different red, green, or blue channel. So you would know what color sliders to pump up or down during the conversion to produce your best monochrome image.
2. Seeing the three channels’ individual black and white representations is a quick way to see three alternative interpretations of the photograph. This can entirely change your perspective of the image and the way you wanted it to be, opening your eyes to more possibilities.

The channel mixer

The Channel Mixer method has long been a popular way of converting an image to black and white, and gives you creative control over the proportions of each channel’s value in the mono image. Since the technique uses adjustment layers, you can always return to the file and change the settings, and layer masks let you apply local conversions too.

One disadvantage is that, if you are not careful, Channel Mixer can clip the highlights and shadow tones, but on the other hand it functions in a way that is very natural for photographers with experience of colored lens filters and black and white film. If that includes you, it can be a big plus. Once you have assessed your mono image in the three color channels, and hopefully gained an idea of how you want to render it, you can then add a channel mixer adjustment layer. Tick the Monochrome option. The output channel drop down menu then changes to Gray. Drag the 3 channel mixer sliders at the while observing their effect on the black and white image. Be careful not to burn out the highlights or cut the shadow details. Experiment with your sliders until you get your desired effect, and then hit ok.

Photo by Beadmobile

Photo by djsosumi

Photo by etrusia_uk (Away for a while)

Photo by Herr Kaczmarek

Photo by Herr Kaczmarek

Photo by blentley

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• In-Camera Black and White Photography

If you have some nice black and white photos of your own, we would definitely love to see them in the comments below =)