Since the advent of digital photography and dare I say it, the demise of film, one of the big losses for most photographers is the ability to take black and white photos that have impact. I know most digital cameras have a mono mode and some digital SLR’s even have a menu option to emulate some black and white filters. However, these are still a bit limiting and nothing beats having total control. This tutorial assumes only a basic knowledge of Photoshop.

I have also included a set of Photoshop actions that you can download and use as starting points.

Black and White Actions

So let’s start with an image and give it some black and white treatment.

Original

Original Image

 

Desaturate
The simplest but one of the least effective ways to convert a photo to black and white is to simply remove desaturate the image. You can do this in Photoshop by going to Image>Adjustments>Desaturate. It’s hardly dramatic and has no impact. See example 1

desaturate.jpg

Example 1. Desaturate

 

Convert to LAB
Another simple technique and one that gives better results is to change the mode of the image from RGB to a mode called LAB. You can do this by going to Image>Mode>Lab. You then need to goto the Channels tab where you will see the channels are now called ‘Lightness’ which contains the levels of lightness within the image and two further channels called ‘a’ and ‘b’. These contain the colour information of the image. Delete channels ‘a’ and ‘b’ by dragging them one at a time to the trash and you are left with a mono image containing only the levels of lightness. See example 2. This looks much better.

Lab

Example 2. Convert to LAB

 

Channel Splitting
This next technique may be suitable in some circumstances. It involves splitting the original RGB image into its three component red, green and blue channels. To do this go to the channels tab and you will see a thumbnail of the composite RGB image and three separate mono images representing the lightness in each of the red green and blue channels.

Channels

Channel Tab

 

The next step is to click on the arrow at the top right. From the menu, choose ‘Split Channels’ and hey presto!

Split Channels

You get each channel separated out into three mono images that represent the lightness values for each channel. Of most use are the red and green channels. The red channel gives an almost infrared effect (except for the sky which would be much darker in an infrared image) and is very dramatic depending on the start image. The green channel in this case gives a nice effect also. Note how the blue channel is dark, grainy and doesn’t really differentiate much between the tones in the image. See the examples below.

 

redchannel.jpg

Red Channel

 

 

Green Channel

Green Channel

 

 

Blue Channel

Blue Channel

Channel Mixer
The last technique I’m going to explain is perhaps the most powerful tool in Photoshop and involves the use of the channel mixer to convert your images to black and white and it gives total control but does require some patience and experimentation to get the best from it. To open the channel mixer go to Image>Adjust>Channel Mixer to see the following box. Make sure you tick the ‘Monochrome’ box at the bottom of the box.

Channel Mixer

 

The top three sliders allow you to mix the lightness values of all three red green and blue channels. There is a fourth slider that allows you to adjust the overall lightness of all the channels combined but we will leave that for now. The sharp eyed amongst you will notice that setting red to 100 with the other two channels at 0 gives exactly the same result as the red channel from the channel splitting technique above. Likewise, setting green at 100 with the other two channels at 0 gives exactly the same result as the green channel from the channel splitting technique and the same applies to setting blue to 100 with others at 0. each slider can be set anywhere between +200 and -200.

As the name suggests, this option allows you to mix the red, green and blue channels to give an almost endless number of possible black and white effects.

You will need to experiment to get the best results but usually, the value of the three sliders should add up to 100 to keep the image looking right. Of course that is only a guideline and doesn’t apply to all images and you can use the constant slider to adjust the overall lightness levels. Importantly, there is no single setting that is suitable for all images. To help you along, here are some settings that emulate some of the characteristics of black and white film. Try them and adjust them to suit your image and your needs. You should start with a colour image in RGB mode for accurate results.

Fuji Neopan
R +45, G +30, B +25

Ilford Delta
R +25, G +40, B +35

Ilford HP5
R +47, G +47, B +6

Kodak Tri X
R +35,G +28, B +37

Kodak T Max
R +30, G +32, B +38

Here are some infrared effects to try as a starting point. Note these don’t all add up to 100

IR Effect 1
R +50, G +65, B -30

IR Effect 2
R +80, G +100, B -100

IR Effect 3
R +60, G +80, B -80

And finally. Here is the original image converted to black and white using the channel mixer with values of
R +70, G +40, B -50. I prefer the darker sky in this. The only extra step in this image is a little tweak in curves to boost the contrast.

Final

Download black and white actions
Black and White Actions