There are many ways to convert your color images to Black and White in Photoshop. In this easy tutorial I will explain a wrong way and one of the many right ways to quickly convert your color image to a great black and white image. To capture the mood I convert many of my humanitarian photographs to black and white using the method in this tutorial.
Man in Street - Jamaica | Converted using the Channel Mixer in Photoshop
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The Wrong Way
The wrong way to convert from color to black and white is to simply convert your color image to a grayscale image. This is done by clicking Image -> Mode then selecting Grayscale in Photoshop. While I am sure someone can argue that there is a reason you would go this route, I will say that 99% of the time you will get better results using other methods.
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A Better Way – The Channel Mixer
A better way to convert your color image to black and white is using Photoshop’s Channel Mixer. As I stated earlier, this is just one way of many, but I use it often. It is really easy to get great results by just adding the Channel Mixer as an Adjustment Layer. In your Layers Panel click on the small black and white circle at the bottom of the panel. This will open the Adjustment Layer menu. Select Channel Mixer.
Now you should see the new Channel Mixer adjustment layer in your Layers Panel. Using this layer you can adjust the Red, Green, and Blue Channels of your image. The great thing about adjustment layers is you are performing nondestructive editing. This means you are simply editing on a “layer” above the image without editing the original.
Now for the magic. There is a little check box called Monochrome in the Channel Mixer adjustments, select the box. Your image went to a shade of gray right? Now you can use the Red, Green, and Blue channels as different “mixers” for your new Black and White image. For images with people I will crank down the red to 60-70%, drop the green to 10%, and then do my final adjustments by cranking in the blue channel. The possibilities are limitless.
Once I get the Channel Mixer set to my liking I will then throw in the Brightness Contrast layer to fine tune the image. I will cover fine tuning in another post.
NOTE: Remember you are only working on an Adjustment Layer. Your original color image is still underneath the Channel Mixer Layer. Just turn off the Channel Mixer Layer and you will see your original color image.
I’m sure one can make an argument for simply converting your image to Grayscale but I have yet found a reason when a tool like Photoshop’s Channel Mixer offers so much flexibility.
Below are three images. The first is the original unprocessed image. The next two are a Grayscale conversion and a Channel Mixer conversion.
As always I would love comments or post your images using this Photoshop Tip.
Enjoy!
Original Image
Original Image
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Standard Grayscale Conversion
Grayscale Version of Image
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Using Channel Mixer plus Brightness Contrast Layer
Channel Mixer version
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