Photoshop Top 40, Feature #36: Black & White

Submitted by deke on 11 August 2009 - 12:15am.

Today marks the fifth installment of "Photoshop Top 40," the ongoing series that promises to tour you through Photoshop's 40 best features, starting at #40 and eventually working its way up to #1. (Which, assuming I've done my math right, will appear sometime in April of 2010.) Feature #36 is "Black & White," which lets you distill a full-color photograph into the best of all possible black-and-white images, one range of colors at a time.

Rather than just trashing color—the way the Grayscale command does (hey, it was once our only option!)—or performing a linear channel merge—as with the Channel Mixer—Black & White blends the midpoints of six color ranges. This provides you with superb control and all but eliminates your chance of clipping highlights or shadows.

As a result, I can take this full-color, multi-generational, goth-Americana portrait from Scott Griessel (of microstock image vendor Folotlia):

And turn it into this color-treated, black-and-white, positively classic work of American Gothic:

And Black & White is so effortless that you might decide to pierce yourself in multiple places just to remember what it feels like to experience a little bit of pain for a change. Or not. Depends on your personal aesthetics, I guess.

(For a list of all Photoshop Top 40 videos thus far, click this link.)

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Comments

Yellow/Red v Yellow/Orange/Red

Submitted by I Simonius on 11 January 2010 - 7:06am.

Why doesn't PsCS4 have the same BW sliders as Lightroom, i.e. why is there no 'Orange' slider in PsCS4?

When using the Yellow and Orange sliders in Lr, I find more control is possible (in that range) than in Ps. Am I fooling myself? Is there some logic behind this decision?

cheers Dekeypoos
;)

re"

Submitted by john.t on 23 August 2009 - 3:48pm.
I tried and followed your guidelines, but result was not even closer to pictures posted above. May be I did something wrong. I will try again with different pictures.

Nice tutorial post, I'm

Submitted by terrancety on 16 August 2009 - 2:27pm.
Nice tutorial post, I'm still a newbie of photoshop. Learn a new knowledge. :)

Why cant I see the video Deke??

Submitted by krazgolfman on 13 August 2009 - 3:44pm.
-MG

I may be wrong, but...

Submitted by Petra on 13 August 2009 - 4:15pm.
...my guess is that you are watching the embedded high definition version on an internet connection that may not be able to cope with it. Go straight to YouTube where you can choose to watch it in high def or normal quality. Maybe this will help? Dunno...give it a go. Good luck, it's well worth viewing. :-)

Black and White versus Color

Submitted by TRLPhoto on 13 August 2009 - 12:44pm.
I love B&W but some photos are just better in color.

Niiiice

Submitted by pheromones on 12 August 2009 - 11:53am.
This is a killer tutorial. Can't wait to try it.

Tutorials

Submitted by LDavid on 16 August 2009 - 4:33am.
Hi Deke. I am a beginner Photo. Could you give a list of the beginner tutorials for photshop. Thanks

Yeah thanks for the

Submitted by felicitybramble on 13 August 2009 - 1:16am.
Yeah thanks for the tutorial. It's great

How can you try it?

Submitted by linksubs on 12 August 2009 - 11:38pm.
Isn't this about viewing it and learning from it? By the way. It's most enjoyable. Top job!

Thank you

Submitted by steventee on 11 August 2009 - 9:50pm.
Nice post. I am a huge fan of black and white, though the color makes a nice touch.

Generalizing the Finger Tool to Color

Submitted by jfrancis on 11 August 2009 - 6:33pm.
If you make two layers from a photo and set the upper one to blend mode = Color, you can make a B&W adjustment layer on the lower image and use the finger tool on the lower B&W layer while looking at the entire color composite.

Black and White Adjustment Layer as a Color Corrector

Submitted by jfrancis on 11 August 2009 - 6:28pm.
I keep trying to see what I can do by using the B&W Adjustment layer multiple times, then coloring and recombining. http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2009/05/making_color_im.html I keep wondering what I can do with it along the lines of a color corrector, or a way of doing 2- or 3-strip technicolor. Maybe it's just reinventing selective color. Seems a little more dramatic, though.

iTunes

Submitted by Petra on 11 August 2009 - 6:20pm.
Will you posting these through iTunes? This question was brought to you by Luger Boa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QynVZj3MAWI

please post thru itunes

Submitted by house music on 12 August 2009 - 8:11pm.
please!!

Yeah posting through itunes

Submitted by mathewaccord on 11 August 2009 - 8:42pm.
Yeah posting through itunes would be a great idea. It would also give you much more exporsure

Still need to trash color?

Submitted by aswingley on 11 August 2009 - 11:15am.
Another great feature, Deke! I use this one a lot. However, if I'm doing it to create a black & white image to place into an InDesign document that will be printed black & white, don't I still need to change the color mode to Grayscale at the end? I had an issue with this recently where I forgot to do that step; the photo lost all detail when printed. Am I missing something? Thanks for being such an awesome resource! Andrea in Alaska

Black and White

Submitted by Bird Toys on 11 August 2009 - 10:28am.
Like the black and white, much better control.

yeah i agree

Submitted by NathenWestfield on 12 August 2009 - 8:37am.
yeah i agree

Oh gods of private videos, unprivate this one ;)

Submitted by Duke Igthorn on 11 August 2009 - 7:24am.
Appears to be that this vid is still in "private mode" for some reason. But hey, good move! By making it private you just made it more exclusive, more interesting and desireable for the pleading viewers ;P OH BTW, last Martini Hour, when you and Colleen were talking about resolution and the Ewww-ness of upsampling by normal methods, you mentioned a program that used different algorythms to trace edges and therefore get better detail work when upsampling. I found a similar program that's running under GPL on source forge : http://sourceforge.net/projects/imageenlarger/ Maybe you might want to check it out if it's any good? The results seemed okay to me so far AND it's free. ( In direct comparison to the normal interpolation methods Photoshop comes along with at least ^^ ) Greets, Dukey ___________________________________________________________ "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" - Douglas Adams

Up-resing

Submitted by MultiplyBlendMode on 14 August 2009 - 1:24am.
There's a nice post here that links to sample results for several upresing (assuming this can be considered a word) plugins. Video oriented, but PS plugins results are similar.

LOL okay you unprivated it while I wrote my comment ^^

Submitted by Duke Igthorn on 11 August 2009 - 7:25am.
Thats sneaky ^^ ___________________________________________________________ "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" - Douglas Adams