NoBs Digital Dogbowl
The NoBs Digital Dogbowl Newsletter:
Keeping you up to date and informed on the latest, coolest, and outrageous happenings inside the world of NoBS Photo Success.
Loaded with Free photography tips, Photoshop tutorials, photo reviews,
and other totally relevant essentials. Be sure to check out the whole thing!
Hungry for more? Visit our digital photography forum.
Photoshop: Getting Us Back To Black & White
One thing the Photoshop revolution has done is help us discover our black and white photography roots. As photographers, we are awed by a crisp and finely tuned black and white image where our attention is drawn to the detail and composition of the work. Photoshop makes it easy for us to do this again without the sting of fixer in our noses or trying to even find black and white film and a film camera.
However, as with anything you do in Photoshop, there are a number of ways to do this. The first being the lowest common denominator of converting the image to Grayscale. While still touted by some teachers, it really doesn’t give a very good rendering of the intent of black and white. The image comes across as flat because all Photoshop is doing is just desaturating the colors. To try this pick an image and just go to Image>Mode>Grayscale and save it that you can use for comparison later.
For a little more creativity let’s use this in a different way. Take the same image and add a Adjustment Layer of Hue and Saturation. To add any adjustment layer look for the little circle at the bottom of the Layer Pallet that is half black and white. With the adjustment layer active pull the Saturation slider all the way to the left (or for a muted color look just halfway) and see if this doesn’t look the same as the Grayscale. You do get a layer mask with this adjustment layer so if you want to use the paintbrush and the black color to punch through to the color image for a black and white image with a color highlight.
Raising the bar a bit, and a tip that can be used in any version of Photoshop, is an Adjustment layer of Graduate Map. Have the foreground color of Black and background color of white (this is the little squares at the bottom of the tool bar. Click on the little black white squares above them to set them to black and white.). Putting this adjustment layer above your image give a much crisper black and white look. Plus you can add more adjustment layers of Curves or Levels for a sharper contrast.
Those who have CS 3 or CS 4 have an even more powerful tool called the Black and White Adjustment Layer. Just clicking that little preset window at the top will give you some great presets including the Red Filter (which I think just should be called the Ansel Adams effect) but here is the neat part. While the adjustment pallet is open you can move your cursor over the image and when you click and hold over any part you can make the colors there lighter or darker for that final control. This uses the scrubby slider of Photoshop (yes that is a real term in Photoshop) to slide back and forth and by going left makes the colors darker or right to lighten them up. You can even create your own presets by clicking on the menu next to the window to save them.
So, there you are. Even with the advancements of digital, we can still create the art of the past.