How to make Black/White from color

[Sherman]

Hi folks
I would like to know the best way to make black&white from color photos. I have some boxing photos at http://bo.joergensen3.person.emu.dk/boksegalla/ that I would like to convert to b&w. But how?

Best regards Sherman

[chris.bailey]

Hi folks
I would like to know the best way to make black&white from color photos. I have some boxing photos at http://bo.joergensen3.person.emu.dk/boksegalla/ that I would like to convert to b&w. But how?

Best regards Sherman

Lots of different ways to do it from using PS to switch from Colour to Greyscale modes, using hue and saturation to desaturate or switch to LAB colour and delate the a and b channels. As each RGB channel is in itself a monochrome, sometime the best results, or at least interesting ones, come from deleting two of the three colour channels. If you want more control over how the black and white comes out add two hue/saturation adjustment layers and set the mode of one to colourise and one to zero saturation. Changing the hue on the first channel then is the same as using different colour filters on a B&W film.

If you have CS, there are now the various film filter effects which you can apply to the RGB picture before the conversion to B&W through the LAB mode method. As someone who used to shoot a lot in B&W, this feels a very natural way to do it.

The boxing image are quite dark so you may find you have to boost the levels up before the conversion and again once you have it in B&W.

Hope I have helped rather than confuse :shock:

[chris.bailey]

Hi folks
I would like to know the best way to make black&white from color photos. I have some boxing photos at http://bo.joergensen3.person.emu.dk/boksegalla/ that I would like to convert to b&w. But how?

Best regards Sherman

Lots of different ways to do it from using PS to switch from Colour to Greyscale modes, using hue and saturation to desaturate or switch to LAB colour and delate the a and b channels. As each RGB channel is in itself a monochrome, sometime the best results, or at least interesting ones, come from deleting two of the three colour channels. If you want more control over how the black and white comes out add two hue/saturation adjustment layers and set the mode of one to colourise and one to zero saturation. Changing the hue on the first channel then is the same as using different colour filters on a B&W film.

If you have CS, there are now the various film filter effects which you can apply to the RGB picture before the conversion to B&W through the LAB mode method. As someone who used to shoot a lot in B&W, this feels a very natural way to do it.

The boxing image are quite dark so you may find you have to boost the levels up before the conversion and again once you have it in B&W.

Hope I have helped rather than confuse :shock:

[Vegas Poboy]

What software are you using? The details that Chris posted are correct but again it would help to know what software you are using to edit your photos.

[AndrewEllinas]

There are numerous methods to covert a color digital image to B&W - have a look at this to start with:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/b-w_better.shtml

[kd6lor]

Andrew was right. There are numerous ways to do it. Most techniques involve a step or two to produce the image. The problem is it can be a pain in the butt to try a few techniques then compare. This was the incentive behind making a script that generates a preview of the image, then lets you pick one. It works in Photoshop CS only because of the dialog boxes that aren't supported in PS 7 or less. If you have Photoshop CS, check out the info at:

http://www.melor.com/projects/variations/01_bw.htm

or

http://www.rogercavanagh.com/actions/variations/02_bw.htm

The script is shareware, but doesn't expire and is completely functional and never expires. If you love it, a donation will get you a version with a few cool enhancements - but the free version will continue to work.


Paul

[eos10dmacosx]

Try http://www.computer-darkroom.com/tutorials/tutorial_2_1.htm includes a pdf which is usefull to refer back to.