Black and white… almost…
I’ve never been a big fan of black and white. After all, the world is in color… I like colors. Indeed, when I’m touching up my pictures I usually push on saturation and contrast, sometimes even a bit too much, so that the blues, oranges and reds pop out…
Still, I have to admit that some pictures can look good even in black and white; furthermore, I’ve always been intrigued by the technique that leaves some colored elements on black and white pictures or movies (as in Schindler’s List or Sin City).
So, even if I’m still a fan of color pictures, I decided to make some attempts of black and white conversions, mostly to practice a bit with the various techniques. Here’s the small (so far) photo set.
First of all, when using digital cameras you’re better off shooting in color rather than using the dedicated “black and white” settings. That’s because when using those settings, the camera is simply doing what you’d be doing later on Photoshop, but without giving us any kind of control on it (or at least, with a much reduced control and without the chance to “undo” and try a different setting).
The two methods I used in Photoshop, which offer a different kind of control but good results in both cases, are the Channel Mixer and the Image Calculations, following the tips found in this article.
As regards the touches of color on black and white, this post shows the two main methods; a third way I’d like to point out is the simple use of the Quick Selection Tool or the Magic Wand, if the object you want to keep colored is good for that kind of selections. You can also use the History Brush, which is more immediate to use but IMHO harder to correct in case of mistakes; anyway, conceptually it’s the same thing as the standard brush usage described in the first post.
In any case, the basic concept is simple: once you have the black and white image, put it in a layer on top of the color one, and with the chosen method (brush, color range, selection) create a mask to “filter” the color so it gets visible. That’s it!
UPDATE: looking around a bit more, I found this post which lists 12 different ways to go black and white… the most interesting are the first one (probably the most complete but also the most time-consuming) and the dedicated Black and White Adjustment in Photoshop CS3.
