Black and white conversion

Can anyone tell me the best way to convert a picture to black and white using photoshop elements 8? I see SO many beautiful conversions all over these forums and my pictures look nowhere near as good! Please help!
-Stacey

I no longer have Elements, and I'm sure there are a variety of techniques people use for various effects when they do a conversion.

I did a google search for

and this is what came up:

http://www.google.com …+black+and+whit​e+tutorial

There looks to be plenty of useful stuff!

In photography forums, Nik Silver Efex is probably the number one recommended BW conversion tool. A little pricey, but worth it. However, not having Elements I do not know if it will work there.

Whatever you do, do *not* desaturate.
For PS: http://www.getcolorman​aged.com/general/grays​cale/ A number of these options will work in Elements as well.

There are 2 real simple ways to do it with PSE 8. I just double checked and made sure they still worked the same as PSE 6, since I recently upgraded to 8. The first is the easiest.

1. Enhance pulldown menu.....Convert to Black and White
2. Enhance pulldown menu.....Adjust Color.....Hue/Saturati​on.....Move the saturation slider all the way to the left.

Either will work for you. Enjoy.

Gnhntn wrote in post #10261209
Either will work for you. Enjoy.

Yeah, but the desaturate option is about the worst way to do it....

I think you're coming on a bit strong about this, René. Desaturation is a perfectly legitimate conversion method for a lot of photos. Granted, it doesn't work well where two colours of opposing hue but similar saturation converge, but to say it should never be used is going over the top.

What people need to understand about simple conversion methods such as desaturation is that they are the beginning of the journey, not its destination. I often like desaturation because it gives me a satisfactorily "boring" conversion, from which I can manipulate exactly to my taste to create something striking. I realise that other people don't like to work this way; preferring a "wow" conversion right out of the bag. Each to their own.

To the OP, I welcome you to try my simple action here. Also, what makes a great black-and-white photo?

CannedHeat wrote in post #10255086
In photography forums, Nik Silver Efex is probably the number one recommended BW conversion tool. A little pricey, but worth it. However, not having Elements I do not know if it will work there.

+1. They do make a Lightroom version

I haven't worked with Elements in a while - I can't remember, will Elements let you work in layers and play with color channels? If so, there is an excellent technique that will help with that.

The Elements "Convert to Black and White" is close to the channel mixer in that it allows you to increase/decrease the amount of the color channels independently, while also maintaining control over the overall contrast. If you start with one of the defaults and then make minor adjustment from there with the sliders then you should be good.

There are other, arguably better, methods that you could try with free add-on features such as the "grant's tools," but the convert to black and white feature is very easy to use (like most of the features in Elements) and it produces good results imo. YMMV.

Hi Stacey - it took me a while to get the hang of producing "satisfying" digital BW convrersions. A lot of experimentation, hit and miss, some plug-ins, many duds.... but eventually I arrived at where I want to be. Coming from some years in a wet b/w darkroom, I knew what I was trying to achieve. The question was, "how to get there?"

Color is very attractive and eye catching, but I tend to think in b/w when presented with subject matter that I feel would be a good candidate for conversion. To me a good candidate for conversion is a subject that has interesting shapes, contrasts and textures, and also a tonal range that can give me a good range of grays from black up to white.

Consider the photo below me, shot about 45 minutes after sunrise two days ago.

I was attracted to the way the high contrast sun was relfecting off the stonework with the resulting texture, in counterpoint to the foliage behind. What you see is the un-processed RAW file... with muddy shadows, a bit lacking in saturation, and just not where I want it.

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bobbytannehill wrote in post #10251087
Can anyone tell me the best way to convert a picture to black and white using photoshop elements 8? I see SO many beautiful conversions all over these forums and my pictures look nowhere near as good! Please help!
-Stacey

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For me, a good B/W conversion always has it's origins in a solid color original. That's where I get my tonality that will become good grays with a pleasing range.

Using ACR I next took the RAW file above, bumped saturation, vibrance, used the fill-light slider in ACR, and reduced the black level a bit to recover some more shadow detail. I then opened it in CS3, straightened out my verticals a bit with the perspective tool, and finished by using several exposure adjustment layers to "operate on" various areas of the picture. Specifically I increased some exposure on deeply shadowed areas to bring back some detail, and did the opposite on some areas I considered to be too bright.

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I was now ready to convert the finished color image to B/W.

Out of curiousity I tried the DESATURATE command in CS3 and this is what I got. The results seemed more or less OK to me, but lacked the contrast and textural punch of what I had remembered of the scene as well as the vision that I had in my mind.

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After playing around with the channel mixer and erasing away selective portions while adjusting those levels, this was the final product. The channel mixer works quite well for boosting or reducing the gray-tone b/w effect of certain colors. The problem though is sometimes it effects another color in the scene in a way that you don't like. This is why I'll mask off the various portions. I may start with the sky, then move to foliage, and then work on stone/man made materials:

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Alas, there's no Channel Mixer available natively in Elements. It might be available as a third party plug-in, though.