B&W Conversion

Experimenting with black and white conversion methods in Photoshop. I tried the channel mixer and a couple of third-party plugins, but I like the results from the method here, which is apparently due to a gentleman named Rob Carr. I’ll summarize the steps, since I found the presentation on that site a little confusing.

  • Convert to Lab Color (Image > Mode > Lab Color)
  • Select the “Lightness” channel (Channels palette > “Lightness” channel)
  • Convert to Grayscale (Image > Mode > Grayscale)
  • Make the new channel the selection (Control-click the thumbnail in the new “Gray” channel)
  • Invert selection (Select > Inverse) (Leave this selection active for the next steps)
  • Fill the selection with black (Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color… > Select color #000000)
  • Tweak the opacity of the fill layer (Layers palette > select “Color Fill 1″ > set opacity to ~50%)
  • Create a new Levels (or Curves if you prefer) adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels)
  • Tweak the levels in the adjustment layer as you like

In addition, I incorporated a tip I found elsewhere which gives a haloed edges effect I think can be effective for B&W, if used sparingly. Continuing from above:

  • Select “Background” Layer (Layers palette > select “Background”)
  • Duplicate layer (Layer > Duplicate Layer…)
  • Run the “High Pass” Filter (Filter > Other > High Pass… > Radius 10)
  • Convert the filtered layer’s blending mode to “Hard Light” (Layers palette > Select “Background copy” > set blending to “Hard Light”)
  • Reduce the opacity of the “Background copy” layer to a good point (I start at 25%)

That’s it. Here’s a Photoshop action with the steps.

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Published in photoshop at
11am, 9.29.04
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