Process for Black 'n White

Hye , i'm just arrive in this photographer community

Could you help me and explain the best process for convert Color picture in Black and White

Thanks to all

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Tisdale on June 4, 2009 at 11:55am

If you have Photoshop CS3 and up maybe earlier version might have it I'm not sure. But in Photoshop if you:

Convert a color photo to Grayscale mode
1) Open the photo you want to convert to black-and-white.
2) Choose Image > Mode > Grayscale.
3) If asked to discard color info, click OK. Photoshop converts the colors in the image to black, white, and shades of gray.

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Tisdale on June 4, 2009 at 12:40pm

Also you can use the desaturation mode.

Desaturate colors
The Desaturate command converts a color image to grayscale values, but leaves the image in the same color mode. For example, it assigns equal red, green, and blue values to each pixel in an RGB image. The lightness value of each pixel does not change.

There are several ways of converting a color photo to black and white.

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Permalink Reply by Matt Needham on June 5, 2009 at 4:45am

Different methods will work better than others depending on the photo and what the photographer wants. It seems to me that people often lump contrast control and BW conversion into the same step. They want a one click solution, but that's not enough most of the time. Good BW is about having the right contrast, and that can be controlled many ways from lighting to processing. It's popular on the internet to say "desaturate bad! {insert favorite BW conversion method here} good!" The reason people don't like plain desaturation is because often contrast still needs to be dealt with. Take a photo shot in reasonable contrast light, hit desaturate, and then use levels to slide the black and white points to the edges of the histogram. That's a quick and lazy way to do it, but once contrast is adjusted so there are actual blacks and whites the tonal scale doesn't look too bad.

When converting from color to BW you need to think about how the color info is changed to grayscale info. This means the colors in the photo are very important, and what works with one photo may not with the next. Simple desaturate may just come up with a luminosity value by averaging the 3 channels (RGB) that we use to make photographic color. Using the channel converter allows you to control how the colors translate into tone. There are many choices of technique and software.

When shooting film we use colored filters on the lens to do the same thing. Example: place a red apple on a green table cloth, and shoot with BW film. If shot with a red filter the apple will be light toned and the cloth dark. If shot with green filter the apple will be dark and the cloth light. The filter allows it's own color light to pass while blocking opposite colors. The filter is the same as the channel in digital processing. Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw have even more color/tone adjustments.

Here's a pretty good link http://www.blackandwhitedigital.com/

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Permalink Reply by Christy S. on June 5, 2009 at 12:54pm

Thanks Matt! This is great information.

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Permalink Reply by Matt Dinerstein on June 5, 2009 at 7:17am

I recently read an interesting article in After Capture (an online photo mag) about processing RAW to B&W, its by Ethan G. Salwen and I've attached a pdf of it

Attachments:

AC0409_RAW_Black&White_Salwen.pdf, 258 KB

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Permalink Reply by dim on June 5, 2009 at 11:00pm

Thanks for the link

I will try this WE

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Permalink Reply by osvaldo on June 15, 2009 at 6:13pm

i have a question why when i convert my pictures to duotone it would not let me comverted to JPG and i cant printed? i know is not a reply but since this is B&W dicussion can same one help pliz.

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Permalink Reply by Miguel Blondet D on September 3, 2009 at 5:37pm

Rob Carr Method

*Convert to Lab Color (Image > Mode > Lab Color)
*Select the “Lightness” channel (Channels palette > “Lightness” channel)
*Convert to Grayscale (Image > Mode > Grayscale)
*Make the new channel the selection (Control-click the thumbnail in the new “Gray” channel)
*Invert selection (Select > Inverse) (Leave this selection active for the next steps)
*Fill the selection with black (Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color… > Select color #000000)
*Tweak the opacity of the fill layer (Layers - New Fill Layer -Solid color... “Color Fill 1″ > set opacity to ~50%)
*Create a new Levels (or Curves if you prefer) adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels)
*Tweak the levels in the adjustment layer as you like