How to get good BW? First shoot for the year.

canonguy

Trying to get serious about my photography this year. How am I doing so far? I find myself leaning more and more to black and white. What is the best way to get the best BW pic from a color digital expoure in photoshop?

gus

G'day kirk. I use Scott Kelby's method described in his book "The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers" & i recon i could get more out of that shot of yours with it. Ive tried a lot of different ways & this method is best for me, but its a personal/subjective thing same as photography is.

If you wish & have CS2 let me know & i would gladly PM you how i do it.

Gus

ginger_55

Cool, I have Kelby's CS2 book. I may give something a try today. Usually I take a lazy way out, like simply desaturating. I have tried Andy's pronounced way with the Channel thing, sometimes it is good, sometimes it is not, but not that much better than desat. I usually plug in a bit of black from selective colors, something like plus 2 or plus 3.

I have admired and asked other people re their photos, often they give some really simple thing like oh, the greyscale thing, one step thing, in PS.

Actually, IMHO, it probably depends on the photograph. If I really like a photo I sharpen it in layers using LAB. One of the steps is to sharpen the L layer. That is black and white. Sometimes I can tell from that that the photo is just a prime candidate for black and white. I don't know exactly what that means. I usually stay with the color: unless..............

ginger (I do love black and white!)

Andy

Black and White Conversion
Dead Simple Way:

* Channel Mixer: 50R, 50G, 0B, check the monochrome box

* Add Contrast by extending the range of tonal values: Via Curves, Levels, or "Auto" if you like

Petteri's Method is really good:
http://www.prime-junta.net/pont/How_to/n_Digital_BW/a_Digital_Black_and_White.html

So is Greg Gorman's:
http://www.greggormanphotography.com/
(enter, click on "learn" and there's a PDF to download)

Oh and there's a lot on Dgrin you might check out, too:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=2066&highlight=black+white
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=2054&highlight=black+white
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=2051&highlight=black+white
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=2045&highlight=black+white

eye-max

I got my start by using actions, then taking the actions apart to see how they did it. If you google “photoshop black & White actions” you will get pages of actions & how to’s.

Here's a couple of links to get you started;

Bill's Black & White Photoshop Action http://www.outdooreyes.com/photo51.php3

A tutorial
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/cb/color-to-bw.html