Tutorial - converting to black & white

I have been getting some requests lately for Photoshop tutorial's. This amazes me, since I really don't feel like an expert - I just make it up as I go along! But I am gratified, and since my readers want it I will try to start posting weekly tutorials.

I am working with Photoshop Elements 2.0, so everything I explain will be based on that program. I am assuming a general familiarity with photo editing. Just tell me if it doesn't make any sense or if more/less detail is needed - as I never claimed to be a teacher!

First up is my black & white conversion method.

I have always loved black & white photography, but I haven't always loved my conversions. The results often seemed flat, muddy, lifeless. But then Stacy at The Land of K.A. shared her conversion method and I fell in love with it. Converting an image this way results in such rich black & white tones, full of the spark of life. Plus, it's easy! I use this method for all my conversions now.

This is the SOOC image I'm going to work with today. Ain't she sweet?!


I edited the image according to my standard processing. I will share that process another time, but for now I'll just show the edited version. I almost always get my pictures looking good in color before converting to b&w.


Now we're ready to convert to black & white. First create a duplicate layer, and then create a Gradient Map on top of it by going to Layer --> New Adjustment Layer --> Gradient Map. This will bring up a dialog box and just keep the automatic settings (normal blending, 100% opacity. It's up to you if you want to name it). Once you click okay, another dialog box will pop up asking what type of gradient you want to use. Since we're converting to black & white, that's what we want - a black & white gradient. So just click on that and viola, your picture is now b&w!



Remember that we had created an extra duplicate layer up above? That's so that we can now merge the gradient map with it, since the gradient map layer doesn't allow much modification. Make sure you "merge down" rather than "flattening" - this way you have the b&w layer on top of the original color, making it easy to go back if you end up deciding you don't like the conversion after all.

Alright, so now we get to tweak the conversion. I have found the b&w gradient to give pretty good results on its own, but most of the time I do an adjustment in curves: grab the middle ticker and drag it to the left, brightening the photo. How much of an adjustment is needed varies according to the individual photo, so just watch the photo to judge when it's "just right."



I almost always tone my blakc & white images. I find pure b&w to be a bit stark, so I usually add in a bit of brown/sepia coloring. First I make another dulicpate layer, and then I go to Enhance -->Adjust color --> Color Variations. My standard formula is two clicks to increase red, one click to decrease blue. Once I've okayed that, I adjust the opacity of that layer until I'm happy with the result. In this case I think I kept it at 60% opacity, and then merged down.



That's the end of my standard b&w conversion method. Any other edits just depends on what that specific picture needs. In this case, I decided to add some gaussian blur to soften the grass a bit. It's rather small, but if you can see the layers menu in the upper right corner, you can see I erased the blur off sweet little L.


And here's the final result.


Let me know if you try this conversion method, and what you think of it! I'd love to hear how you do conversions, too.

Next week I will share my standard processing. Let me know if you have any other requests.