Color to black and white conversion in Photoshop - best way?

[claudiocambon]

Hi folks,

I wanted to ask folks for their advice on the best techniques on converting color files to black and white ones in Photoshop primarily (and in other programs, although I may not be buying any new software anytime soon, or at least, before I have to do this job in the next week to 10 days).

Any info on best techniques, as well as on warm toning images would be very welcome too.

I know that the grayscale button was modeled on PlusX, a look I don't care for, and the desaturate function doesn't do it for me either.

My knowledge of this is very limited, and to date I have used the aforementioned only for reference purposes, but now I need to do some serious conversions for a job this week, and I want to get a sense of what the best way(s) is/are to proceed. Any referrals to on-line tutorials and such would be great as well. (I also did a brief search on the forum, but didn't find anything; if I missed that, and you know of threads, and can link them here, that would also be mightily appreciated.)

Greetings to all from the Mexico City Airport, en route from Cuba to LA. Cheers!

Claudio

[Ash]

I can't remember the version of PS where it came into effect, but there is a dedicated "Black and White" plugin that allows you to control each colour channel for the best b&w image, just like having a filter on the lens. If your version doesn't have it, then not sure what to suggest!

[z_photo]

i tend to use the channel mixer. adjustment layer/channel mixer and as a starting point i set the red channel to +72 and the other channels to 0. then i slide the g and b up into approximately 16 units, picking the best look of the conversion as the final set points. i will sometimes also use a cuves layer to optimize the appearance. i think there are a couple examples on my lame web site

[Stephen Best]

I can't remember the version of PS where it came into effect, but there is a dedicated "Black and White" plugin that allows you to control each colour channel for the best b&w image, just like having a filter on the lens. If your version doesn't have it, then not sure what to suggest!

Black & White appeared in CS3 and it's not a plug-in but a regular Adjustment (can be an Adjustment Layer). This supersedes previous methods such as changing to Grayscale mode (which does a colorimetric conversion to whatever Gray space you have set in Color Settings), setting Saturation to zero, Channel Mixer, or taking the Lightness channel from a Lab conversion.

[Peter De Smidt]

I really like the BW adjustment layer feature introduced in CS3. Not only does it work very well for bw, the ability to adjust opacity can work wonders with color images. For example, let's say that your color image is losing detail someplace. Do a bw adjustment layer that puts more detail in the area. (This works as long as there's detail in one of the color channels.) Then lower the opacity of the BW layer to get the look you'd like. Of course you can make masks and all the other things you can do with adjustment layers.

[Mark Stahlke]

Take a look at Silver Efex Pro from Nik Software. It's a Photoshop plugin. You can download a 15 day trial version.

I recently started using several plugins from Nik and I've been very impressed by all of them.

[Frank Petronio]

Use the CS3 B&W adjustment along with a strong curve adjustment.

The older Channel Mixer will do nearly the same thing as the B&W adjustment, from what I remember...

[z_photo]

Use the CS3 B&W adjustment along with a strong curve adjustment.

The older Channel Mixer will do nearly the same thing as the B&W adjustment, from what I remember...

pretty similar but i have been getting decent results with the channel mixer. after more playing with the new feature i may change my opinion

[Gordon Moat]

Channel Mixer is a good choice, depending upon which version of PhotoShop you are using. You could also simply view each channel individually, and turn off one or two channels to see the result. Then delete the one or two channels you are not going to use, and the end result is a single channel image. Depending upon which camera, scanner, digital back you are using, sometimes the Green Channel can give a cleaner and nicer result than either Red or Blue.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography

[Ron Marshall]

What I do is duplicate the image and then copy the three color channels to the original image as separate layers. I adjust each of the RGB layers with layer masks and curves. Sometimes I will also convert a copy to LAB and strip out the luminance layer. It gives very selective control. Not time consuming since I recorded an action to strip out the channels.