Better Black & White Conversion

[Timothy Huber]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://photojojo.com/content/tutorials/black-and-white-digital-conversion/' target='_blank'>http://photojojo.com/content/tutori...tal-conversion/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Long long ago, Black-and-White ruled the Earth. Frosty white highlights frolicked with rich black shadows in the Meadows of Grayscale, and it was good. Then came Digital, whose dingy whites and muddy grays nearly drove Black-and-White to extinction. But now, like wild-eyed scientists cloning a mammoth, we've found the best ways to convert digital color photos into the REAL honest-to-goodness-that-looks-like-Ansel-Adams-took-it Black-and-White. NOT the pale washwater grays and off-white whites you get with "Convert to grayscale". And we're going to show you how."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1242224143.usr147.jpg" style="border: 0;" /></p><p>Some of the most beautiful and compelling photographs are black-and-white. While some digital cameras offer a black-and-white mode, there are a variety of ways to convert any color picture to black-and-white which allow you to have control over the final product.&nbsp;Over at Photojojo they've posted a great tutorial on using the channel mixer to customize a black-and-white conversion.</p>

[Damion Chaplin]

'Convert to Grayscale' never works properly because the converter tries to do something with the color data, guessing what shade of gray it represents. And it's usually wrong.

The #1 sure-fire way to get a good-looking B&W photo from a color photo is to go into your favorite photo-editing app (mine's Corel Photo-Paint), convert the photo to 24-bit 'Lab Color' Mode, then delete every channel except the 'lightness' channel. What you'll be left with is the photo with only the black-to-white information left (no added color data to screw with the conversion). Then you simply 'convert to grayscale'. If the photo just isn't 'dramatic' enough for you and you want deeper blacks and brighter whites, just adjust the contrast levels either manually or via the histogram until it looks the way you'd like.

Works for me every time.

[Jason Dunn]

...convert the photo to 24-bit 'Lab Color' Mode, then delete every channel except the 'lightness' channel. What you'll be left with is the photo with only the black-to-white information left (no added color data to screw with the conversion).

I tried to do that with Photoshop Elements 7, but it lacks the proper functions - it has a nice "Convert to B&W" function though that allows you to adjust each of the RGB channels, and contrast to boot, so it works quite well. I find that I tend to do B&W conversions inside Lightroom anyway if it's coming from one of my photos.

[NeilE]

I quite enjoy using Lightroom's B&W functions to make B&W images from colour. You can adjust each colour channel individually, either by slider or just by clicking somewhere in your image and moving the mouse up/or down to change the tone.

Of course, I still very much enjoy doing this in the darkroom (moreso than on the computer), but this is DIGITAL home thoughts, so... I mention Lightroom :)

Neil