Preparation and necessary software

Although the tutorial is presented with Photoshop CS3 as the tool, CS2, CS, the new kid in town Pixelmator, and even Adobe Photoshop Elements in early versions are offering the functionalities to conduct the necessary steps to achieve the goal of converting your colour photos into vibrant and contrastful black-and-white pictures. This tutorial helps you to understand the basic idea and process of getting there, and offers an alternative way for Photoshop CS3 as well.

The conversion process

Step 1: Open the photo

Chose the picture or photo which you would like to convert and open it in your photo editing software.

Step 2: Create a hue/saturation adjustment layer

This tutorial introduces you to adjustment layers which are a great way to work on your photos in a non-destructive way. What does that mean? Well, you do not change the actual image data but rather the appearance of the image. You will see why that is of great help later on.

Step 3: Desaturate the photo

This first adjustment layer will simply take care of getting rid of the colour: reduce the Saturation to -100%. As mentioned earlier we are not destroying any image information but only modifying the look of it. To see the original data simply switch off the adjustment layer by clicking the little eye-icon on the left of the layer thumbnail. Clicking at the same spot again switches the adjustment layer back on. As you can see: Your photo is still intact.

Looking at the black-and-white version you might actually see a picture which is quite flat in contrasts and feels gray-ish and washed-out. A good reason to move on to Step 4.

Step 4: Select the background layer

Make sure to select the background layer with your photo on it before moving on because otherwise you might get mixed up.

Step 5: Create another hue/saturation adjustment layer

The new layer should be created in between the previous adjustment layer (Step 2) and the photo on the background layer. If this is not the case make sure to get this right before moving on.

Step 6: Increase the saturation

Often it makes sense to increase the saturation to get better results later on. +20% to +30% in the saturation settings is a good start.

Step 7: Change the blending mode

Now change the blending mode of the adjustment layer created in step 5 to Color. You will not see any difference yet but we have just prepared our adjustment layer to bring on the magic in Step 8.

Step 8: Adjust the hue settings

Now go back to the settings of this layer by simply double-clicking on it and start shifting the Hue-slider until you get a nice contrastful result in your photo. You might want to play around with the Saturation-slider as well to increase or decrease the strength of the effect.

Step 9: Create a curves adjustment layer

Last but not least you could push the contrast even more by adding another adjustment layer: This time choose Curves as the type.

Begin with settings similar to those in the screenshot and move on from there to get your best results. This step is optional. Decide for yourself whether you need to do this step at all.

Well done!

That’s it. Now you should have a photo with a nice vibrant feel to it and strong and powerful contrasts. Switch off the adjustment layers “curves” and the “color blending mode” to compare to a simply desaturation. The difference is probably amazing. Again, see the advantage of adjustment layers? Simply switch them on and off to check back to an earlier state.

Some general advice

In case you are working on your own photos and you have a digital camera which is able to take RAW format photos consider using that format in the future. The files are way bigger but Software like Photoshop offers amazing options to create black-and-white pictures from RAW files. If you are working on JPEGs or something similar make sure that the compression is not getting too visible when creating your black-and-white version. Some colour settings make compression artefacts turn out stronger than they are in the colour version.

The alternative way

Photoshop CS3 only

Photoshop CS3 offers a new Menu item for black-and-white photo conversion. Try to see whether you like to work with it or whether the above option is better for you. To some extend you have finer adjustment options but then again you are applying a destructive filter. To avoid that you could choose to create a smart filter which is only available in version CS3. More on that possibly in a later tutorial.

I hope you liked this tutorial and would love to see your pictures created using this method. Feel free to link them in the comments area if you own the rights to them. Questions, comments, and feedback is very welcome. Thank you for reading.

The tools

It does not really matter whether you are using Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or any other image editing software for better pictures as long as your application can do the following steps as well, or at least in a similar fashion. I am using Photoshop Extended (CS3) for this tutorial but any other version will do the job just as good.

Preparation: cropping the picture

You should get your picture, graphic, or whatever you would like to scale down, cropped at the right proportions before you start. I chose a picture taken with my digital camera at 8 megapixels and cropped it down to a landscape format. I am using 2 windows within Photoshop to help you see the differences and details in the picture.

Step 1: Checking your picture’s dimensions

You probably have a target size in mind. For this tutorial I have decided that I want my picture 300 pixels wide. You can find the size of your picture at image » image size … in the menu. I am assuming your picture is far bigger than what you would like to end up with. If you only want to shrink your picture a little you might want to start at a later point within this tutorial.

Step 2: Sharpening your picture

The first “little secret” is to sharpen your picture before scaling it down. This enhances delicate textures and prevents their vanishing during the down-sizing. I am using the Filter » Sharpen » Unsharpen mask option here since it does not sharpen the whole picture but rather the textures and fine details that need preserving.

Play around with the settings a bit to get familiar with the controls and the results. In this scenario I picked an amount of 130%, a radius of 1,0 pixels, and a threshold of 0 levels. Your picture might need other settings but probably something similar will be just fine. Once you have done this a few times you’ll get comfortable with the settings … trust me!

Step 3: Reducing dimensions – for the first time

Now comes the part where you need to get out your calculator in case you don’t like a little simple algebra exercise.

Take your target dimensions (in my case that is 300 pixels in width) and multiply that number by 4 (again that gives me a result of 300 pixels x 4 = 1200 pixels). That number is your first size to reduce your picture to.

Stop, why that you might ask?! We will scale the picture down in a few steps and make sure that we do not loose too much detail on the way down to the smaller sizes.

Step 4: Save the details!

Okay, we are down to 1200 pixels (you might have a different width or height, whatever you are aiming at). Time to get the sharpener out again because we lost some details. I choose the amount of 60%, a radius of 0,6 pixels, and a threshold of 0 levels in Filter » Sharpen » Unsharpen mask again. Things might look a bit too crisp which is okay! By the way: using the above values is my default for a lot of reductions. They work fairly well as a general purpose setting.

Step 5: Down by demand

Okay, repetition time. Next you shrink your picture to half of your current size using Image » Image size. In my case that means 600 pixels in width.

Step 6: One more time

As explained above, you sharpen your picture (use 60% / 0,6 pixels / 0 again) and reduce it to your final size (mine is 300 pixels in width). Last but not least, sharpen again using the unsharpen mask.

Step 6: Done, but too crisp?!

Well done! There is your crisp picture waiting for its great moment to be put on your website or blog. But what if it is too crisp now?

Step 7: Take back some of the sharpening

Use Edit » Fade … and reduce your last filter application until the pictures appearance is fine with you.

Usually 50% is a good measure to avoid “over-sharpening”. Test and try until your picture is fine.

Advantage repetition

When comparing the just finished picture with one that is just scaled down you will probably see quite a difference, even if you sharpen the one scaled down directly to your final dimensions. Click on the screen-shots above to see a larger version.

Although it takes a little longer to prepare pictures like this the result is often a lot better than the simple way. Having people asking what I do to my images proves that it is worth the effort I guess. Of course you could create an action or automate this process in case you have the same dimensions and genres of pictures more often. I might to a little tutorial on automatic or batch conversion a little later.

I am looking forward to your feedback and recommendations.