The Adobe Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers, 2nd Edition by Scott Kelby

Author:Scott Kelby [Scott Kelby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Riders
Published: 2023-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Instant Black & White Conversion

Some of the best techniques are the easiest and before the black & white profiles were introduced, this was my go-to method. I still use it when I want a really quick-and-easy, good-looking black & white conversion.

Step One:

Start by pressing the D key on your keyboard to set your Foreground color to black and your Background color to white. Next, at the bottom of the Layers panel, click on the icon that looks like a black-and-white cookie (well, any circle that’s half black and half white always looks like a black-and-white cookie to me), and from the pop-up menu that appears, choose Gradient Map (as shown here). Believe it or not, just the simple act of applying this black-to-white gradient map will almost always give you a much better conversion than clicking on the B&W button in Camera Raw’s Edit panel, or by going under Photoshop’s Image menu, under Mode, and choosing Grayscale.

Step Two:

Once you choose Gradient Map—boom—you’re done. A nice, contrasty black-and-white is ready to go. Now, if you want to tweak how it looks, you can (and I’ll show you how to), but when I use this one-click method, I just want a good-looking black-and-white fast, without a bunch of tweaking. That being said, here’s how to tweak it (well, we’ll do that in the next step), but just so you know, technically, at this step, you’re already done. The next step is totally optional.

Step Three:

If you look in the Properties panel (seen here, below left) that opens when you add the Gradient Map adjustment layer, you’ll see a small gradient ramp. Click anywhere on that ramp to bring up the Gradient Editor (seen here, below right). Now, to tweak this black-and-white, click once on either the black slider beneath the left side of the ramp, or the white one beneath the right side of it, and that adds a diamond right below the center of the ramp (shown circled here in red). Click-and-drag that diamond to the left to brighten the midtones (as I did here), or to the right to darken them. If you want darker shadows, drag the black slider to the right. If you want to increase the highlights, drag the white slider to the left (as I also did here. Note: You won’t see these changes in the image while you’re dragging, but will see them once you release your mouse button). Well, that’s how you tweak the image if you feel like tweaking it. When you’re done, click OK in the Gradient Editor.

Before/After:

Here, on the top left, is how the black-and-white conversion would look if we went to the Camera Raw filter (or opened a RAW image in Camera Raw) and clicked the B&W button in the Edit panel. It looks pretty flat and lifeless. On the bottom right is the after version using the Gradient Map method you just learned, which looks much more contrasty and pops much more.

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