Hi I'm Karl Taylor and in this video I'm
gonna give you my top tips for creating stunning black-and-white photos. Now if
you've ever tried to convert an image to black and white, chances are you've ended
up with a flat dull photo with none of the original contrast. Now this can be
incredibly frustrating, especially for photographers who are new to Photoshop.
Now to help you create stunning black and white images, I'm going to talk about
the key things to understand when shooting for black and white and also
share my preferred methods of converting images to black and white. This is also
covered in much more detail in our Advanced Photoshop Course for
Photographers on KarlTaylorEducation.com as well as our individual Photoshop
classes. Now, black and white photography when done correctly can be incredibly
striking but to create truly stunning black and white images it requires a bit
more than simply adjusting the saturation slider in Photoshop. One of
the quickest ways to convert images to black and white is to completely
desaturate the color from the image, however, although this is easy this
method results in very flat boring black and white images. Now my preferred method
is to use the black and white adjustments layer in Photoshop but let's
also take a look at what black and white photography actually is. Now, as the name
suggests, black and white photography is any image that consists of only black
white and gray tones. Often it's used interchangeably with the term monochrome. Black and white photography refers to images that only contain gray
tones whereas monochrome images actually may
use one color of various tones of that particular color. Let's take a look at
this graphic to better explain that. Now, here in the shot of the model, we can
look at the RGB values in the corner and they're all equal 233, 233 & 233.
That's in the red channel, the green channel and the blue channel. When those
values are all equal then the color is neutral, therefore is not a color it is actually a tone of gray, black or white. You can
see on the background area that the tone is neutral as well. The values are 114,
114 and 114. Zero would represent black or pure black and a value of 254, 254
and 254 would be just one value below pure white. If we look at the next image
we can see that it looks slightly different, whilst it looks black and
white it's actually a monochromatic image. If we explore the values you can
now see that those values are not neutral the red channel is 226,
the green is 234 and the blue is 233. So what that means is there's slightly
less red in this image and there is slightly more green in this image than
in the other channels so therefore we end up with an image that is slightly
more cyan and slightly more green than the neutral black and white version. If
we look at the background values, you can see RGB has 109, 114, 117, therefore
showing more blue in the background and less red in the background than in the
equivalent black-and-white image therefore giving a cyan, blue tint to the
shot. So what makes good black and white photography?
Well, black and white photography can certainly look impressive but it's not
suited to every genre of photography. For example, you wouldn't necessarily expect
to see black and white product shots of a woman's perfume or would you expect to see a black and white food image. Landscape and wedding shots on the other
hand may well suit themselves to black and white photography. Now regardless of
what your subject is, there are a few things worth keeping in mind if you plan
to convert your images to black and white. First of all it's important to
learn to understand the difference between luminosity and color. Luminosity
refers to the perceived brightness or darkness of
a hue but to fully understand it, it's important to understand hue, saturation
and color - let's take a look at another graphic. Hue refers to a specific color
on the color spectrum, saturation refers to the intensity of that hue with 0% being gray and 100% being the purest color. Any color is
therefore a combination of both hue and saturation as well as some degree of
luminosity. Different colors at different hues and saturation levels will
therefore have different luminosity values. You can more clearly see the
different luminosity values for different colors in this particular
illustration, from this you can see how the color red for example may not work
well on a dark background because of its low luminosity value. The same way a
light blue subject on a white background may not convert very well and you can
see that yellow is very luminous with a value of 94% in this illustration. Here
are two more examples showing that in real-world environments both of these
examples were shot in color but you can see how the fashion image with the model
in the red dress does not work well in black and white because she almost
blends into the background, whereas the model in the yellow dress does work in
black and white because the yellow has a much higher luminosity value than red
and although it's on a dark background, it stands out much more clearly. Seeing
an understanding luminosity rather than color can be difficult especially if
you're new to photography, however you can also look out for scenes with high
contrast as these will often translate well into black and white. To increase
contrast you can also use filters. Before digital, film was already adjusted to
make the subject look good and by this I mean that different films had different
tonal characteristics or different contrast levels. Photographers would actually select a type of film based on the type of
subject they were shooting, however, it was still common practice to use a
filter to further enhance the contrast. For example, if photographing a landscape
image and you wanted to accentuate the contrast between the bright blue sky and
the white clouds, it was common to put a red filter on the end of the lens to
increase contrast on that black and white film by cutting out the blue light.
Therefore, darkening the sky and increasing the contrast between the sky
and clouds. Polarizing filters could also be used to increase overall contrast
nowadays though shooting with DSLR's our cameras are fine-tuned to reproduce
color, which means we often have to do a lot more post-processing to get a good
black-and-white image. Now filters can still be used on our color RGB cameras
but another option is to apply a preset filter in Photoshop. Another important
thing to think about in black-and-white photography is your composition. With no
color to distract you in the image then the elements like composition become
much, much more important. It's important to keep in mind the compositional rules
such as the rule of thirds and look for things like leading lines and
interesting textures because color has been removed from the image and you're
left only with tonal value and composition. How do you convert a photo
to black and white? Now that you understand what makes a good black and
white image the next question is how do you create that black and white image
well in theory simply desaturating an image will result in a black and white
image but it will result in a very flat boring black and white image. When we
think of a good black and white image those such as famous photographers like
Ansel Adams or Peter Lindbergh you'll immediately notice that their images
have high levels of contrast and are rich in tonal values. Simply desaturating
the image won't give you this type of result. To achieve the striking black and
white imagery often associated with these artists involves
slightly more work than simply moving a slider to the left or right. Now as I
mentioned earlier my preferred method for converting images to black and white
is to use Photoshop's black and white adjustment layer. Although there are
other methods, I find this one offers the most control especially when I'm
combining it with multiple layers and then masking through those layers to
reveal the best parts. You can see exactly how to convert images to black
and white using this method in a number of our Photoshop tutorials
on KarlTaylorEducation.com but I'll outline the steps briefly here. First of
all, you have to apply the black and white adjustment layer in the
adjustments panel, click the black and white adjustments icon, or alternatively
go to layer, new adjustment layer, black and white. This will open a dialog box
and automatically apply a default grayscale conversion. Secondly, you then
select a preset from the black and white adjustment layer, or you can adjust the
color sliders. You can either select from one of those preset options where you
can add things like filters, such as red filters, orange, etc. too, or adjust those
sliders to adjust the gray tones of the particular colors in the image. Option 3,
you can apply a tint by using the black and white adjustment layer it also
allows you the option for adding a tint to your image very similar to those
monochromatic images that we were talking about earlier. Now to do this,
simply check the tint box and select the color tint that you want to apply. Other
ways to convert your images to black and white include simply desaturating the
image, or applying a channel mixer, or gradient map adjustment. Again I'll show
you exactly how to use these adjustments in our black and white Photoshop class. I
find using the black and white adjustment layer somewhat easier than
using the channel mixer or gradient map as it offers a greater degree of control
than simply desaturating the image but whichever method you
choose to use you'll achieve the greatest control by creating multiple
layers and using masks through those layers to reveal particular areas of
varying contrast from different parts of the image. This is very similar actually
to using multigrade paper and printing techniques back in the days of the
darkroom. Now the points I've mentioned here should help you identify what makes
a good black and white image and by following the steps I've outlined and by
watching our tutorials on KarlTaylorEducation.com you'll soon learn how to
create your own amazing black and white photos. Get my completely FREE
photography course with no signup required. You can also access our free
90-page eBook, just click the link or go to KarlTaylorEducation.com/free/
