The art of black-and-white photography is a difficult one at that. Apart from clicking the picture with all those settings, one has to go through the entire process of developing it just right.
Sure one can click using the "black-and-white" setting on the camera or just desaturate it using photoshop. But it cannot come quite close to what real B&W photography really is.
I had to convert some pictures for black-and-white printing when I went about "Command+U" ing it, when my dad came and almost yelled at me. Then I was sent to this guy who does runs a printing press and happens to be good at photoshop. He then explained to me some of the tricks behind this whole idea.
Apparently is it very much impossible to do a B&W of a digital image as real as that clicked with a real film camera due to the chemicals and paper used.
Anyway, here's a tutorial that might get a sort of B&W effect out of a digital image.
Step 1: Open your image.
Step 2: Desaturate it (Ctrl+Shift+U or Image > Adjustments > Desaturate). Some say that desaturate loses image data, but my friend told me that it doesn't matter as we are after all manipulating it anyway.
Step 3: Change the mode to Lab Colours. (Image > Mode > Lab Color)
Step 4: Duplicate the Layer (Ctrl + J)
Step 5: High Pass Filter. (Filter > Other > High Pass). Now depending on the size of your image, enter the value. Say if it is a 800*600 image, then give it a 2.5 radius. Give it a 10 if it is say something like 3000*2500....So on and so forth.
Step 6: Change the opacity of the layer to around 30% and set the layer mode to Hard Light.
Step 7: Make sure you've got your original layer selected and not the duplicated one. Go to the Curves (Image > Adjustment > Curves) dialog box. Now move the top-right and bottom-left anchors as shown in the screenshot. What will happen is the highlights will get brighter and the shadows will get darker. Move the lower anchor just so that the shadows get dark, but you should not lose out on any other details. Same goes for the highlights.
Step 8: Kind of done. If the image is not what you expected, then something either went wrong with the High Pass filter setting (try a higher or lower radius) or you could increase/decrease the opacity of the duplicated layer.
Final:
Another example:
Using just Desaturate:
EDIT: I forgot to add this small step
Step 9: If the image is looking too smooth for one's liking, just go ahead and duplicate the original layer, add noise (Filter > Noise > Add noise). The amount of noise can vary according to one's liking, but make sure it is monochromatic.
Step 10: Change the blend mode to overlay and reduce the opacity a bit...
For those who are uncomfortable with the curves, can go ahead and use the Levels dialog instead.
Again, I'm no expert in this field, so if anyone else has some valuable suggestions, please let us know.
....and, if you liked this tutorial, then I want in on the rep war
Photoshop:: Black and White Photography
Re: Photoshop:: Black and White Photography
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