4 Ways to Make Amazing Black and White Conversions in Photoshop | 🔴 LIVE Replay

so black and white conversion as we see is an art now why is black and white conversion an art it is an art because through black and white conversion we determine which color will be rendered how for example consider you have taken a picture of a landscape with a bright blue sky and fluffy clouds okay now when you convert that to black and white how will the blue look like will it look light gray will it look white will it look dark gray will it look gray with a tint of dark grey these decisions are made in Photoshop and these are called conversions black and white conversions and that's how we love it now here's the thing black and white conversion conversion is essential because if you just go ahead take away the saturation just the image just looks flat it's a no-brainer if you just go ahead take away the saturation it's just a flat image with no colors there's no art in it now what do I mean by that for example if you have an image let's go ahead file in your document let's open up an image and hope you guys are having a good time today so if we go to your document and let's open up anything this is just for understanding purposes and suppose the background is white also sorry blue so we go ahead and create a solid color adjustment layer and let's choose blue okay so you have a blue background and then you take a picture of an orange fruit yep have you eat an orange before I guess you have so you have taken a picture of an orange which is just like in the front of the background the blue background okay now since it is a color image the orange will pop out the blue is different from the orange so the orange really pops out of the photo really jumps out of the screen looks great to you but if you make it black and white here's how it will look so right now if I go ahead create a shape and let's color it orange okay now this is an orange this is standing out from the background now here's what happens if you just take the saturation out so let's open up a hue/saturation adjustment layer if you just take the saturation out whoa you cannot even make the difference why because the saturation of the colors was same the luminosity was same before converting this to black and white so we need to figure out how each color will be rendered when you're converting it to black and white otherwise just like this it will turn out to be a flat image did you get it if you have any doubts make sure you ask that Bob Stein says I don't know why but I never get the audio from these live sessions is the audio right R Andrew everyone else getting the audio right let me know if Dottie is not right so I'll just go ahead and check it again okay so this was it but instead here's what I would suggest instead of adding a hue saturation and taking away all the saturation here's what I would suggest create a black and white adjustment layer click on this gray white icon the adjustment layer icon and click on black and white okay so there we go Fred Atlantico black white there we go now here as you can see it's still converting to black and white but you can make out the difference between the orange and the background because this gives you some sliders if I just pull it out here this gives you some sliders see the Blues are pulled a little bit to the left which means the blue will be dug up now these sliders determine the luminosity of each color what do I mean by that these sliders determine the brightness of each color before you converted that to black and white so for example right now we have the blue slider so whatever was blue before converting this to black and white the brightness of that will be controlled by this slider okay if I take this ladder all the way to the left see it becomes black all the way to the right see it becomes point so this is just a basic understanding of how this is happening now what if you want orange what if you want to control orange there's no orange slider well standard grade five grade four primary colors secondary colors you know when we mix red and yellow what we get orange so we equally take the sliders of the red and yellows to the left or the right we will be able to control the luminosity of the oranges so red has some portion yellow has some portion equally just increase or decrease it and we will be able to control the oranges so that's how this works so instead of taking away all the saturation we do this pretty basic stuff right now let us apply this actually so let's close it and let's let us apply this to this photo okay now here's the key every image is made up of three colors every image that you see on the screen that you capture by your camera it has three colors what are those colors are G and B red green and blue right you agree by that okay now these red green and blue combine to give you the fully colored image and you can look at it by going to channels channels has red channel green Channel and blue Channel now you might say this is black and white but here's what's happening these are not actually black and white these are just representations okay if we go to the red channel look at these areas these are completely bright which means these area has a lot of red in it similarly in the red Channel look at this area this area is very dark which means it has very less red in it or no red in it instead if you go to green Channel have a look this area's darker then it was in the red channel which means it has very less green in there but this area is brighter in comparison to the red Channel because this has more green obviously because it is a tree so these are just a representations and if you are having any trouble understanding you can also look at colors you can go to edit and then preferences if you are using a Mac if you're using maggots would be in Photoshop and then preferences edit preferences and you can just open up the Preferences and there will be a thing called inside the interface show channels in color if you check this it will show you the channels in colors okay I just didn't click okay let's go again edit preferences and then interface click on show Channel and color click OK and there we go look at this area so much of red look at this green not so much but this one has a little green look at the blue and if it is easier for you you can use this but I think black and white is much more indicative which color is more where now why am i explaining you this this was important because we're going to use this basic theory to get our black and white conversion on point so first of all let's go to preferences back in interface and let's check that off and click OK now if you look at the red channel we can see so much more details in the clouds right which means if we brighten up the red you can have much more details and clouds so let's select the RGB again and then come back to less now add a black and white adjustment layer and then we know we had a look in the channels that if we go ahead and increase the red we'll have much more details let's just get that out okay so have a look at it just an instant increase in the red slider gives us so much more details have a look awesome isn't it now let's try and there are the sliders so this area was yellow before we converted it to black and white so this controls the luminosity or the brightness perceives brightness of yellow area if you want to have a little less detail okay just like that that's fine green areas if you go a little extreme you see something called banding these lines which looks not good okay so you need to be avoiding banding and go little not too much a little okay if that's a raw photo it gives you much more leave a into how much you can move the slider now let's look at the stance dependent if you just go ahead and increase that see these lines banding you got to stay away from this okay so this looks good to the left blue to the left looks good that way magentas to the left wow it looks awesome now have a look at it before and after before after isn't that beautiful now if you have just used the hue/saturation look at how flat it would look so this is just hue/saturation taken away the saturation down and this is the black and white adjustment layer now once you add the black and white adjustment layer you know anytime we make something black and white we want something extra and that's what contrast right we want a little more contrast to it little more fun to it now there are two ways to add contrast one is the beginners way and one is the white way if you're using Photoshop you gotta use this way at least advanced ways using the curves but at least you got to use this if you're just doing it very quickly if you are if you don't want to be like a beginner use this and this is called the levels adjustment layer click on this icon and do not add brightness contrast in hues contrast no that's a really really beginners a really really basically you don't want to do this you want to go to levels so click on levels and you have this now the levels adjustment layer has five sliders let me just briefly go through what they do and you can obviously go to red green and blue if this was a color image but this is black and white doesn't really matter go to RGB and then the slider on the left the top left this makes the dark things darker very easy this makes the dark things dark the slider on the right on the top this makes the bright things brighter the slider at the bottom right makes the bright things darker and the slider on the bottom-left makes the dark things brighter okay the slider on the bottom right makes the bright things darker Satur on the bottom let's make the dark days fighter as simple as that now if you want to increase the contrast and if you want to make the dark areas more darker without blowing out the white areas without blowing out the bright areas just use this slider if you use the contrast slider it also blows out the highlights and takes down the shadows so you need to find out whether you just want to work on the shadows I just want to work on the highlights what do you want so this gives you much more option the slider in the middle controls the mid terms if you take it to the left it brightens up the mid-tones if you take it to the right it darkens up the mid terms so I will take it a little bit to the right just like that this one a little bit to the right and then brighten up the shadows just a little bit to give it a little tint have a look at it before and after ever look so this is the before this is the after it depends upon what your taste is what you want to want from this photo totally depends upon it and that was it now you can of course go ahead to the Reds or the greens or the blues and then maybe introduce a little blues on the shadows right or maybe if you want to introduce the yellows use this because yellow is the opposite of blue and that's pretty much it let's introduce a little bit of blue to the shadows if you want that you want a little bit of yellows you can also get it gives it giving this a nice colored look so before whoops so there we go before after just the saturation look at how bad that was looking this is so beautiful meanwhile if you have any questions make sure you ask that okay so alright so doesn't seem to have any questions now let's move on to the second wave so the second way is using Adobe Camera Raw and I already have a tutorial about this but I will go a little more in-depth into this one now let's go ahead and come back to our second image I think I will be using this as a photo so let's go ahead and use this as a photo now if you were using a raw photo here's what you would do when you import that you already open that and open in Adobe Camera Raw and then you can make the adjustments there itself instead of having to do right here now I had to explain a little bit of theory behind it before we go into it now there's an option when you open the raw photo there is indeed an option that you can actually hold the shift key and when you hold the shift key instead of open image there's another option that comes up that's open object and if you click that one button it opens your image as a smart object which gives you the ability to always go back to the raw settings always just double click on it on go back to the raw settings okay so there you go Alastair says will this video stay up it probably won't Katie says how would you make the clouds more prominent I just did that okay so let's go ahead and open up the image again and let me show you let me answer your question how to make the clouds more prominent and if you could explain what prominent actually means that would be better my English is not that excellent so I think you want more details in the clouds here's what I would do so when we are using the black and white adjustment level come again to this one Katie will come again to this one using another method but let's just do that using the previous method that we just explained so here's what we would do so the clouds are red is a features turnoff this have a look the clouds are reddish right and the sky is lowish now if we brighten up the reds and darkened down the blues it will become more prominent if I'm just getting the meaning of the prominent right so if you want the clouds to be more visible that's one of the techniques that we can use whatever the color of the cloud is brighten that up whatever the color of the sky is darken that down or do the opposite darken the clouds and brighten the sky depending upon the mood so here in this case I'll just brighten up the clouds just like that and darken the sky and this makes things more prominent Wow have a look at the before and after before after look how more much more prominent the sky now here is one of the drawbacks of using the black and white adjustment layer and that drawback is this I already already went through this while we were doing it and it is this if we take down something too much these lines begin to show up see if we take down this see these lines they look ugly they look really ugly look at the yellows if I take down that much it looks really the thing that doesn't agree oh so you need to be very careful with these sliders and the next method which I'm going to teach you I think that's the third method doesn't go through this so every method has its own pros and cons so but if you use any method carefully it's going to be great for you because every method used this is the same basic principle let's go ahead and close that down and let's use the Adobe Camera Raw method ELISA says you're so good at pronouncing my name normally it's not the case did I pronounce the name right this time I'm so sorry if that's wrong thank you for answering you made the clouds heavenly beautiful thank you so much Katie and I'm glad that you're present and attending the live stream thank you everybody who is present okay so now let's move to Adobe Camera Raw amazing settings so there we go now if just go to filter and then Camera Raw filter let's just unlock this and what I would personally do I would convert this into a smart object and before that how did I unlock this if you're wondering just click on the log and it unlocks this layer now convert this into a smart object why because we always want to have the ability to go back right if you do something and you be on VR humans you always want to go back in to make things right and whenever you have the chance you should do it so let's convert that into a smart object so go to filter convert for Smart Filters or you can right click here and choose convert to smart object two of the big deal of any of the two things that pretty much does the same thing so go to filter can work for Smart Filters and click OK and this is converted into smart object how can you tell that well there's a symbol there on the right button you can tell it that way and by the way if you want to make the nails bigger not related but I do sometimes right click here and choose large thumbnail or small thumbnail so whatever you're comfortable with now go to filter Camera Raw filter now this opens up the image in Camera Raw Adobe Camera Raw when you open up a row photo it does pretty much the same thing Erin says Irvin says just joined missed a lot I guess no there's so much more to do how do we know if the colored photo will look better in black and white even before doing the conversation conversion great question later how do you pronounce your name please leave that down in the comments so very valid question very nice question and the only way we can do it is by just a quick conversion into black and white and look how it's looking that's number one of course that's going to be the most obvious thing to have a look at how it will look in black and white by just doing a quick conversion so in Lightroom there is a black and white button which you can just click and there's also no shortcut I think it's V there's a shortcut and there's a button which you can click and convert that in black and white and convert back into color and see which one looks good also if you really want to have a look if you're looking at from a theory perspective see when the colors are boring then we convert our image to black and white number three so number one you gotta have to look whether it looks great in black and white just a matter of a click marrow of a button just have to look in Photoshop just add a hue/saturation adjustment layer take away the saturation turn it off and on you'll have a general idea whether that looks better in black and white or color so number one try out number two when the colors are boring convert that into black-and-white or monochrome do anything you want when the colors are born number three when it's much more about the shape and form than the color then you can work that into black and white number four when the color is used for emphasis okay this is important when the color is used for emphasis just as an egg sample I gave you if there's a picture of an orange with a dark blue background because of the color of orange the orange is really popping out of the forum really grabbing our attention at that point of time you do not want to convert that into black and white so number four if emphasises the emphasis is used do not convert that into black and white if color is playing any role any role in getting the images pattern getting the images much more adding much more story to the photo do not convert that into black and white okay so here we wear now Kevin's has launched thumbnail mind-blowing I don't know what was my glowing in that but was this simple thing and by the way I'm so happy that your mind is blown I just hope that didn't happen literally anyway so there we go so first off what you got to do you got to convert that into grayscale so instead of going here and checking convert to grayscale and by the way if you're wondering whether this will look black and white better or color better just check this and check out and look see which one looks good so instead of just clicking it here what you can do with the targeted adjustment - I think it's this one right click on it hold the right click and choose grayscale mix okay it converts it into black and white now once it converts it into black and white come back to the basics and then what's the first thing that we're looking in a black and white high contrast or a contrast right so simple you know what contrast is one of the most underutilized slider in Lightroom people just don't use contrast people think okay we'll do the highlights and the shadows and the whites and the black peg we don't need contrast but sometimes contrast works wonders the first stuff let's go ahead and increase the contrast a little bit Wow Wow it looks amazing right out of the box then you want some more details in black and whites right so how do we get details clarity simple not too much because if you go too much it will add some halos so this is fine I guess 30 is fine now you have a quick look at the before and after before after if you want to know the shortcut it's P P far bet people are penguin before polish before anybody P there no okay so P B for B that I just did before the livestream so P have a look at it before and after fantastic isn't it now you can always go to this one HSL grayscale tab and hunt around whether that red looks good there or the orange looks good this way or what you can do you can click on the target adjustment tool and then if you want to brighten her face click and it up if you want to darken the sky down click head down as simple as that if you want to darken her clothes talking address click and drag it down simple isn't it if you want to darken maybe brighten up her eyes let's zoom in quite a bit and click and drag it up find the balance if you want to brighten up her hair click and drag it up a little bit brighten up the sky click and drag it down just like that darken up this a little bit fine that looks fine brighten up this even more that looks fine now we can come back to the basics and decrease the exposure and once you decrease the exposure you can again go back to this one it's always playing the deciders there's no step involved in anything because photography and retouching is an art and art is very different from maps so therefore now we can go ahead and increase the brightness even more it looks really fantastic now of course you can see a lot of banding here why because this is a very low res jpg photo this is not a war photo if this was raw you would not see that now once you're satisfied click OK now since this is a raw photo you can always go back to the settings so you can double click on the Camera Raw filter it always comes back with those settings as as it was before now you can even go ahead and set the white point and the black point so on and so forth do all the stuff that you want try different temperatures and look which temperature looks good to you I think the temperature was all right maybe decrease it a little bit and there we go click OK you can always change that now comes to the banding now what to do of the banding let's now there are two ways to remove banding number one okay number one so very off line okay so yeah so number one blow it out forever there is banding just blur it out or add the noise and we're going to use both so first of all we see the banding in the sky okay so first off you got to select the sky how do we select the sky click the quick selection tool select the quick search quick selection tool and then select the sky very quickly easy to select because the gap is a little contrast see doesn't really matter plus I'm going to use some masking to it so basically sky is selected now press ctrl or command j j4 jugg ctrl J command J if you are using a Mac and then it's on its own layer have a look and if you are wondering how to dive turn this layer solo I help the alt or option key and clicked on it to make it solo and make it not sort of diamond again okay so this is solo all you have to do now let's mm solo hold the ctrl and select it click on it this will select whatever there is in this layer okay again I'm going to tell you hold the controller command click on it now go filter blur Gaussian blur and blur it out just when the banding goes away I think this is a good place to be at click OK if you're satisfied now control a command d turn this back on and that's pretty fine now these mountain ranges or the hill ranges are gone of course you're going to use something called masks so click on this mask button take the brush make sure the foreground color is black the Queen's afloat or somewhere around 20 ish and just remember to hack other areas which do not appear and white other areas which appear right now the mask is completely white which means whatever there is in this layer is appearing is visible now if I paint anything with black that area will become invisible black other areas which are invisible white other areas which are visible did you get it if you have any questions make sure you ask that I'm here for you okay so now let's go ahead and decrease just paint on a little bit with blacks and let's just go ahead and increase the flow to swim around for English and it's looking fine maybe near her hat a little bit and that looks pretty fine now to add some little extra effects what you can do you paint it a little extra okay so to add some extra effects you can add some film grain to it so to add film grain you have to create a mud layer okay a merged new layer so how do we do that press ctrl alt shift and E if you are using a Mac that would be command option shift and E that creates a new layer with everything merged down now you can as well convert this as well to smart filters or smart object and then convert for Smart Filters and then go to filter filter gallery and there's an awesome effect called film grain we're just going to apply that so I'm already selected it artistic film grain and you can play with the values the way you want I think I'll decrease the highlight values maybe increase the intensity I'll go a little with no I guess this is fine and that looks amazing to me click OK it adds a little film grain have a look at it before and after so this is the before I mean actually this is the before and this is the astrum looks very much more interesting isn't it so that was conversion using Adobe Camera Raw and you can use the same targeted adjustment in Lightroom as well then you can proceed to Photoshop and do all those panning stealth and film brain and whatever you want so let's go ahead and answer some questions am i no the only one that did not know if you hold ctrl and click the layer it loads the selection so great Kevin you know what even I didn't know this I don't know two years ago and it literally blew my mind when I got to know about it very useful thing diamond again it's going to be useful to you whether you're compositing whether you're retouching it's going to be useful to you okay in very unexpected ways you know you don't know when these small little things are useful to you in Photoshop amazing interesting now the next thing that we're going to use is channel mixer now I did talk about how to color grade using channel mixer then one of my previous tutorials I talked about color grading using channel mixer if you have not watched it watch it and in that it I go in depth about how to use channel mixer how channel mixer is how that functions right from the beginning white from the basics so here I'm going to talk about you can also create black and whites using channel mixers so there are tons of ways to just do one thing black and white conversion in Photoshop so okay so for this example we're going to use some other image so let's use back the same image let's just use it okay in this image we know the clouds are red okay we know the skies are blue we know the pyre is brown which is a form of red of course and this is green now how does the channel mixer function okay so the channel mixer can be applied as an adjustment layer and also as an adjustment so if you go to image adjustments it has the channel mixer and you can also create an adjustment layer channel mixture okay now before going into channel mixer it's very important that we understand how channels function and that's what we did right now we learned how channels function right in the beginning of the video if you have missed that you can always get back after when the replay comes in so any image is comprised of three colors what are they red green and blue and what are these these are representations of red green and blue channel in the red Channel this area is bright because this area has a lot of red this area is very dark because this area has so less red in the green this is a little brighter this is darkened because this has more green then this was in red channel so that's pretty much wraps it up now the channel mixture so I would suggest that the ad channel mixer using the adjustment layer because it is much more it is absolutely I would say non-destructive so click on the channel mixer it opens up the channel mixer properties if you cannot see the properties you can just double click on this icon opens up the properties boom now what this actually does let us understand how it actually deals with color so here you have the preset if you do some changes you can go ahead and save that as a preset and this will load as a preset as simple as ABC now this is output channel don't get confused this is just target this is just target now if red is selected we are targeting the red if green is selected we are targeting the greens if blue is selected we are targeting the Blues now what do I mean by targeting for example if red is selected now whatever we do to all these four sliders will only happen to the Reds of the image all this especially all these three sliders will do is increase or decrease the amount of red and that's pretty much it we have locked red we have targeted Reds and all these sliders will do will increase or decrease the amount of red and that's it now you might say why there are three sliders for head green and blue why there are three ciders and for slider that's confusing here's why the red slider will increase or decrease the amount of red in the red area the green slider will increase or decrease the amount of red in green areas the blue slider will increase or decrease the amount of red in blue area wasn't that interesting now if I go ahead and increase red it increases red in the red areas which are all which is making the picture a picture a lot more very ugly if I increase reds in the green areas look how that will look the green here has become a little reddish if I increase the Reds and blue areas that the sky becomes a little reddish because the sky was a little bluish the increasing reds in the blue areas you want to take away the red from the blue areas and take away increase the Reds a little here and that's how the color grading works if you want to know more about this listen to that but if you want to create black and white just check monochrome but before you do that let me just show talk to you about this button this is the reset button click on this and everything just resets to normal check this monochrome now these three sliders take a completely different role now the output channel is gray it's not RGB it's gray grayscale okay now these sliders do a pretty much different thing these letters begin to control something called luminosity just like the black and white adjustment layer now you might ask why not use the black and white adjustment layer why to use this over the black and white adjustment layer here's what I would say I get a lot of comments from you guys and that's all valid the white you use this method over that method today you talked about this method why to use this method over the last method would you please tell me why you use that method over this method and here's the answer to that every method there is no one method over the other method sometimes destructive retouching can be better than non-destructive retouching it totally depends okay on a lot of factors every method has its own pros and cons and we need to keep those pros and cons in mind for example in black and white adjustment layer what we had we had all those many sliders but here was the demerit if you move the sliders too much there would be banding there would be those break and pixels that would look do not look nice but in this it would not happen so much okay you just have three sliders and all you need is three sliders actually because these three colors just combine to give you every color that you right now see on the screen if you just take a magnifying glass to zoom into your screen you'll see small LEDs with three colors red green and blue you'll actually see that just try it I just tried it okay so now you want to increase the Reds a little bit decrease the greens and and here's the thing here's the fun with this and there's a total here okay this is the total luminosity let's reset that okay and change back to monochrome the total luminosity has to be hundred think of this think of it like this you have three glasses red glass green glass and blue glass and think of luminosity as one liter of liquid luminosity liquid think of luminosity as one liter liquid and think of red green and blue as glasses now you take the luminosity liquid totally one liter and pour that equally in all three glasses that's what we are getting it getting right now actually it's 40-40-20 ratio and you get the idea now if you take away the Reds the overall image becomes a little darker because it's just like taking the red glass and pour it pouring the liquid away taking away the liquid so the sum of the liquid the sum of the quantity of liquid is Lao is now lesser than one liter and that's why the whole of the image gets affected now if you take the Reds all the way to the left it becomes completely black and that's very evident okay so now you minus 100 all of the red is gone now all of the red is gone if you take it more it goes in - and look at the total it totally goes in - so that's how it works think of luminosity or brightness as a liquid and these three colors as glasses they have to be at one liter the summation of the quantity of the liquid has to be one liter for the image to be at perfect luminosity the luminosity it came with okay now for example if you want to make the clouds more prominent so we know the clouds are red so what we would do we would increase the red and we know the skies are blue to balance that we would decrease the Blues see now as compared to black and white adjustment layer there is very less break in pixels there's not any banding breaking is very less and it's looking much more convincing so if you master this it's much more better now some of you might ask that well I wanted a little yellow there yellow slider if there was a yellow slider it would be so great but there's no yellow slider what to do here's what to do okay let me just explain by the way you can just take a way to take on the greens to get the total 200 and you can do that just like that I can do that but here's what I would suggest what if you want the yellows there is no yellow slider all you need to do and we have already talked about this and you might already know about this that RGB is the opposite of what C my R is the opposite of C G is the opposite oh we need the opposite of M magenta and blue is the opposite of what yellow RGB CMI now if you want to increase the yellows what do you have to do decrease the Blues right so decrease the blues but it decreases the overall brightness of the image so the points to which you decrease the blues it increases the same points by increasing the Reds and the greens to balance that okay increase a little bit to balance that and that's pretty much how this works now it became a little dark but you get the idea how to do it make sure the total is always 100 now here's where I would disagree because again as we already discussed black and white conversion is an art it's not a mat you can defy the rules if it looks good to your artistic taste please go ahead and defy the rules you can go beyond hundred can go below 100 that's totally upon you so that is using the channel mixture now one of the tutorials which got really popular one of my tutorials and that was black and white conversion using calculations and if you watch that awesome we're going to talk about it in a little detail so we're using this photo and gather a by the way if you have any questions make sure you ask that Patrick says thanks for doing this in ratio video song thank you so much Patrick for being here and joining us live okay so let's stand this up no we don't want to save it now what our calculations again the theory the fundamental concept again goes back to what channel's write you will be surprised to know now make a copy of this layer always make a copy now what to do go to image apply image doesn't work on smart object so make sure it's raster image go to edit image sorry and then apply image sorry calculations actually I'm so sorry calculation view using calculations name it instantly goes black and white well all you have to do layer you can choose merge to layer one doesn't really matter Channel now here's the fun part choose the channel that you like red channel choose the blue Channel and then see which one looks right choose the blending mode overlay or whatever you want and then masking and it will be a lot of fun now I know you didn't understand the thing here's what's happening okay so layman's concept all you have to do you have to go go to this calculations image calculations choose the blend mode that I choose the channel that you want so I think I like blue here and this one I think I'll go with green maybe I'll go with green here and blue here okay now you can change the blend mode to one you like maybe I'll go with multiply now the cried maybe over lane softlight okay I think overlay it was good but it was too much so you can always go ahead and decrease the opacity see which one looks good and then click on okay look at how much of a detail we have on his face and once you're satisfied click OK it's a brilliant black and white but this doesn't create a black and white it creates a channel alpha channel now a lot of confusion happening here's what is happening let's delete that come back to RGB let us understand so as we explained before every image is made up of what 3 colors red green and blue okay and these are what just representations this area has a lot of red and that's why it's bright okay if you choose do this area doesn't have so much of red and that's why it's dark but but instead his dress or whatever he is wearing the scarf it's blue and that's why that's much more brighter than it was in red so when we go to image and when we go to calculation let's come back to channels to have a better understanding let me go to image calculations all is happening is this one channel over the other if you choose source one let's choose layer one and source two layer one the layer which we are in right now and if the source one is green and the source two is blue all it means that we are taking the representation of the red channel as a layer to the top and then we are taking the repeat representation of the green Channel sorry the blue channel I think the green was on top the green channel on the top the blue channel on the botton and changing the blend mode of the layer which is above it which is in this case green to overlay and that's pretty much it so for this example source one is green source two is blue and blending blend mode is overlay and opacity is 99 it all means that we have the green channel at the top below the green channel we have the blue Channel okay and we have changed the opacity of the green channel to 99 and the blending mode of the green Channel to overlay and that's pretty much it if you go ahead and select it create a layer of it create a layer of the blue keep it one above the other then do the exact same thing the overlay and opacity the same result will turn up so she was the one that you like blue you can use blue two times you get the idea I think I'll use blue two times that looks much better I'll change maybe hard light opacity hundred looks good to me click OK but before you click OK what do you want to what you want your result to be to be created as a new channel or a new document let's create new channel and click OK okay now what you can do you can if you want to add colors later you can just click on this channel press ctrl or command a control a command C for copy first control a for all select all control C or command C for copy come back to RGB come back to layers create a new layer and that's done then press ctrl or command V now this creates that into a new layer now there's another way of doing this is that select the channel select the Alpha Channel go to image mode grayscale now this flatten layers click OK discard other channels click OK now this creates directly a grayscale image but here's the disadvantage if you want to add some other colors later you are bounded you have to go to image mode and change back to RGB again so that's completely your call whatever you want to do let's use RGB again because of course obvious reasons RGB is universally accepted and also it's social media and all those stuff RGB if you want to add colors to it if you want to add some tint to it RGB it's your way to go now to add some more contrast here's what you can do you can create maybe just unlock this and create a solid color adjustment layer and make it black and just bring this beneath it and then what you can do you can just select this create a mock take the brush make sure the foreground color is black and then just paint in the background since the hair is black it kind of matches and then just paint in awesome isn't it right that's awesome you gotta be a little careful but you get the idea of what I'm actually doing right so this is much more contrasting much looks much more nice so have a look before and after so that's something very options you want to do do if you don't want to do don't do that's totally upon you so let's have a look at the commence Hector says love how you make it so simple to understand great job that in great job thank you so much Hector means a lot to me so let's go ahead and delete the mask also what you can do you can just carve out the highlights here's how so if you really want to add some more contrast some more stuff maybe add a little more details to the eyes so create a new layer and this is something which I have already talked about and this is one of my favorite things to do and I'm happy to share that again I'm happy to share the secrets again create a circle just like that okay and then hold the Alt key or the option key by using a Mac and with the rectangular marquee tool or the this one the polygon lasso tool just draw a line perpendicular to the direction of light so the direction of light is this right perpendicular line hold the Alt key just subtract that more than little half so make orange selection slice selection and delete the iris then again select the elliptical marquee tool hold the Alt key just to move it over the spacebar and we move it just like that and fill it up the twice how to fill it up with mine make sure the foreground color is white press X to toggle between black and the whites and the foreground the background and shake the foreground has a background and press D this reset the swatches okay if the swatches was something strange color you can just press D to reset the swatches or for the same thing there are two small buttons this one to reset the swatches and this one to toggle make sure the foreground color is white and then press odd backspace to fill it up with white or if you're using a Mac that could be option delete now ctrl or command D to deselect that and then filter blur Gaussian blur add some blur to it now that is too much add so much of a blur so the edges become smooth so I guess this would be nice then is great click OK and then change the blending mode to change the blending mode to overlay okay now have a look at it before and after so this is the before this is the a trim now you can make copy of it hold the Alt key just drag it and drop it right here that's looking fantastic now you can also make a group of both of these and just duplicate that to increase the impact and that's it now make a group of both of these groups and decrease the opacity and Wow have a look before after wasn't that fantastic now let's OH pervious Isis I mean I maybe I missed the beginning how can I get to see the full video it will be uploaded Andrew said that Andrew will it be uploaded now let's add some more details let's add a levels adjustment layer and then you know what was the blend mode that brightens up stuff we did talk about that in our previous video so screen is a blend mode which brightens up everything so doesn't matter which adjustment layer you choose unless of course it's not making any change it changes to the photo so change the blend mode to screen this brightens our pretty much everything but we don't want to brighten up everything we want to brighten up only the highlights so all you have to do select the mask press ctrl or command I to invert the mask then take the brush and just paint on the highlights with a low flow so get the float of some around 30 or 20 ish and paint with white on these areas so so once you go ahead and paint with white on these areas make sure that these areas you're not spilling it into the shadows okay so make sure you're not spilling it into the shadows just paint over this area and and by the way thank you guys for joining in the live stream really appreciate that if you're joining in right now okay just like that a little bit on his nose a little bit here a little bit there and you can take a little more time and do this properly have a look at the before and after just a little before after Wow little bit there may be honest period a little bit okay now to add more drama you can add a little blend if to it right click on this and go to blending options take this ladder of the underlying layer from left to right to make sure that we are not painting on the areas which are already in shadows if we do that it's a little sharp if you want to make it a little soft hold the Alt key click on this break it down and then wow it's much more smoother and just paint on the highlights now you can always go ahead and control the opacity to add more shine and dimension and according to what you want from it so that's pretty much wraps up the all the four steps and just stay I want you to stay because this is the bonus tip which nobody has ever talked about when it comes to black and white conversions and when it comes to the moments where the image is really really special or maybe really really difficult to do or maybe you have a lot of time on a Sunday morning and if you really want to check this out this is very high-end now let's come back to our main image I don't want to save it let's click no and let's come back to our this image now in this image we know that that's okay we know that her lips are also red a little a different tone of red our clothes are also red now when we use the red slider okay if we go to black and white and when we use the red it affected both our lips and her clothes so what if I just want to affect the lips what if we just want to do that there's a way what if you just want to select a specific color and that specific color and the sliders don't exist for that color what do you do then then you use the hue/saturation adjustment layer now you said don't use the hue/saturation adjustment that's bad yes that is but if you use it this way you will be able to control each and every color that you want in the picture choose how to do it add a hue/saturation adjustment layer okay you want to make the list area a little darker here's what you have to do it's good don't convert this into black and white don't take away the saturation just have a good selection of the color of the lips here's what to do click on this button and just click once on the lips okay take the hue all the way to the left just for indication purposes make it a little bigger so that you can see what's happening now see though to see the two bars there the top bar is the target bar the bottom bar is the result part okay if you move the hue look this area's changing this area is constant the one on the top that's the target that's the color that we are targeting and this is the result that targeted area now all you have to do is to make that a we have very narrow feed right now we are targeting just this area so move it and figure out a sweet spot where just the lips are selected then move the sliders a little bit outwards a little bit to the right a little bit to the left so that whole of the lips are selected but not the clothes okay I move it too much it also begins to select the clothes okay that's a pretty good selection not awesome pretty good selection there we go bring the hue to zero now this is the fun part take the lightness down and when you take the license down the lips become what dark but it's not black and white so what it's not black and white add another hue/saturation adjustment layer and take away the saturation now you can name this lit if that's is not interesting I would love that you would leave a hate comment that is something which I discovered two or three days ago and literally literally literally I would say blew my mind you can create one for her clothes one for Skeen one for the sky one for her hair exactly selecting the exact color let us try a couple more things let us create another hue/saturation adjustment layer and then maybe effect just her eyes maybe and this time let's turned this one off so that we can see the colors can we do it I don't know let's try doing the eyes take the saturation all the way to left and maybe make it a little just like that can we do it yeah we can do a little bit and then bring back and then turn on this one and then look at what kind of effect it has if I make it darker Wow it adds so much much more dimension to it I'll make it brighter add something too - now here's the fun if I make it brighter it adds so much more dimension to the eyes but it makes the skin a little bad here's what I would do create a mock control a command I take the brush and just paint on the eyes with white flow under just on the eyes there you go before after before after now you can name this eyes now this is the way minutely going from bottom to top naming everything creating now this will take ours and ours you can just even select individual flowers on a dress you can do whatever you want that's a lot of fun to do so that's pretty much it that's pretty much it for today's black and white conversion I hope you enjoyed this and if you did and if you want more tips tricks and tutorials don't forget to go to my youtube channel it's youtube.com slash fix imperfect and make sure you hit the subscribe button thank you so much for being there for me being here with me I'm really grateful that you spent your evening morning or afternoon whatever time zone Leah from with me I'm grateful have a great day great evening or good night if it's night thank you so much

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 62,807

Keywords: photoshop black and white, high contrast black and white photoshop, camera raw black and white, adobe camera raw, dramatic black and white photoshop, black and white conversion photoshop, calculations photoshop, black and white adjustment layer, hue saturation, channel mixer black and white, channel mixer monochrome, piximperfect, photoshop tutorial

Id: fFTiSgXt0FU

Length: 58min 3sec (3483 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 06 2017