Lessons

Lesson Info

Converting Color to B&W

Now we're gonna take a look at we're in folder number ten color to be debbie, but of armor made shots here so let's, take a look at what's going on in the layers panel over here looks like we've got a grady at map adjustment layer I'm gonna increase the size of my layers panel here so you can see the names, so we've got a grating it map and that is what's getting rid of the color in our image and changing it to black and white. I've also got a black and white adjustment layer up here that will also drop the color from an image. Ok? So in my opinion, in photo shopped, there are two ways to get a beautiful black and white image. One of them is by using a black and white adjustment layer. The other one is by using a grady a map adjustment layer and you can see the difference to me. The great map adjustment layer always ends up a little bit more high contrast a little bit darker than black and white adjustment layer, so we'll take a look at how to do both of those and then I also added a l...

evels adjustment toe adjust the color in the image of the lighting rather just a little bit so let's take a look at the first way to create a black and white image I'm gonna go ahead and delete these two layers so we're going to go ahead and use a black and white adjustment layer for the first one case we're going to use black and white from that adjustment layer menu immediately photoshopped drops all the color out of your image but it gives you these wonderful sliders and I'm gonna move appeared at the top of our screen so we can see our mermaid see there's our tail anything that fun she's covered with fish she's all mad because she's been hauled up into the boat you know, tough crowd ok, so let's take a peek at some of the stuff we've got here in our black and white adjustment layer adjustments properties panel we have a slew of presets which can be a lot of fun so to try out the presets all you're gonna do is choose them from that menu and as you do the's sliders will reset themselves okay, so if you don't like the contrast what she looks really angry there, if you don't like the contrast that you get from just doing the black and white adjustment layer then you can tweak it using one of these presets that's all well and fine but you can also change these sliders yourself if you drag let's say the red slider to the left you will be darkening rid wherever it appears in your image if you drag it to the right you'll be lightning rid wherever it appears in your image so without a lot of work it all you can really create and neat custom contrast riddled image ok the trick can be finding where those colors appear in the image okay, so that's one way to do it and depending upon what you like that may be a lot of fun I find that folks who really love to tweak pictures like this method a lot because it gives them a lot of control the other method that I want to share with you is a great at math adjustment layer okay? So ingredient we've been using that pretty much all day radiant is a soft fade from one color to another a grady in't map adjustment layer will remap the colors in your image or the shadows in your image to one end of the grady enter one color that you said in the green and then it will map the highlights to the second color in your radiant so if that's true and we tell your idiot map adjustment layer to use the colors black and why then it's going to map our shadows to black and our highlights two white and create a really pretty high contrast black and white image so we're going to go over here to the grady it map adjustment layer in our menu and as you can see photo shop pulled from my foreground and color chips to get my grady in colors so that's why we've got an orange toe quiet radiance because that is what my color chips were set to if you can remember to set your color chips to the default of black and white with black on top before you create a great at math adjustment layer, then you're done it's just a one step process and we'll do that in a second but if you're like me and you forget every time to race at your color ches before you create the dadgum grady a map adjustment layer, then all you have to do is click the little down pointing triangle to the right of the grady and preview in the properties panel or the adjustments panel and then you're going to click that third pre set in the top row which will always be a black toe white radiant and that will give you a two least in my opinion one of the most beautiful black and white conversions that you can get in photo shop outside of using nick software's silver effects pro that is hands down the best way in my opinion to get an incredibly gorgeous black and white image but it's a two hundred and what fifty dollars plug in you know you've already spent what eight hundred dollars on photoshopped so you can do some of those things here is well but just so you know what? We're up here in our grading and preview remember those photographic toning process that we loaded at the top of the day we clicks the little gear sprocket, and we came down here to photographic toning? Then we loaded all these amazing presets that are all new and cia six well, you can click any of those and look at the different color effects we've got going on in here. Some of the more work on some images, some of them won't that's a real pretty one if you were to see this framed and hung in a gallery might initially think it was a black and white, but most black and whites that are framed and hung in that way aren't black and white it all their black and white with another temps of colored add extra richness and depth to the image. So definitely play around with these photographic toning presets and seeing it a unique custom, seemingly black and white looking image here that looks black and white in it. It's not it's copper and c p a on top of black and white. Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and skip my properties panel over there. And we'll delete that layer and will delete that layer and now let's say we know we're gonna make a black and white we're going to set our color chips to the default of black and white press picks so that black is on top otherwise you're going to get your shadows mato white and your highlights map to black which is a nice negative if it s so now that we got our colored ships set up let's go down here to the adjustment layer menu and shoes grady at map and it's still pulled our yeah I saw the color tubes be the default of black and white so when you do that it should be this one is that and it really is just one step so that's fun now let's take a look at some partial color effects ok? So we're gonna build the mermaid that's back there framed the back in the room ok? So we're gonna build this girl right here partial color effects from one of my favorite effects and photo shop I mean, in my opinion there's no easier way to turn a photo into a piece of art is to do something like this so what we're gonna do is we're going to do it a couple of different ways hey somebody go ahead and delete all of the layers that I created for you we'll start from scratch all right so let's, go ahead and try this using the black and white adjustment layer first so we'll choose black and white immediately our image goes black and why you can use thes sliders to adjust the colors in your image if you'd like. You can also use the on image adjustment tool here in the black and white adjustments properties panel so let's say that we like the contrast that we're getting, but we might like for this dark area of her hair which I was blue in the original we might like it to be a little bit darker it let's say that it was difficult for you to figure out which one of these sliders you should drag to make that happen, you can just click on the on image adjustment tool come over to your image, click and hold down your mouse button and tow lighten that specific color wherever it appears dragged to the right too dark in that color wherever it appears dragged to the left. So that keeps you from having to do the guessing game of which slider that particular hugh lives on and so then photo shop will take care of adjusting those flyers for you so we could do the same thing over here um you know to maybe these shells or such we could lighten them or dark in them you can really create a custom image in this way okay, I'll make her a little bit bigger because now what we're gonna do is we're going to use the included layer mask to hide conceal black conceals by reveals to conceal part of that layer content in doing so we're going to punch a hole right through this layer and you're going to be able to see through it to the color that lives on the original layer so a lot of times when folks see a partial color effect I like this the one that we're about to do they assume that it's a black and white image and then we've painted color on you can certainly do that but most often times it's the design or simply revealing color that was already in the photo before they made it out of the made it into a black and white so it's click to activate the mask for the black and white adjustment layer and then we can come over here grab our brushed tool said to paint with anybody no black black conceals so we want to conceal some of that black and wife cells in really far in and let's start with her pretty pretty eyes hey make sure you do have a soft brush check that in the brush preset picker and as we paint we are revealing the color on the original layer and you can see over here in my layer mask and I've got just a little bit of black where the iris of her eyes now we can come over here to the other eye and reveal the color on that now if you mess up in the reveals and skin or what have you simply press the is he and then paint with white tio reveal what's happening on that layer which is well where are black and white is coming from it's analyses are space bar and screwed up a little bit increase our brush size with a bracket key make sure to be painting with black and we can reveal the color on her lips it is one of the most fun things to do and find a shop and again for you outside the lines press x to flip flop your color chips and you can come back in and fix that area and seriously if you're doing this for money, you would be zoomed way far in you would be taking a lot longer or maybe not thin I am here so it's a really neat effect yeah another product that you can offer in your photography business so for this one was also revealed the color on her little seashell headdress by painting with black so you're revealing the layer the black and white layer I'm revealing the contents of the rich here underneath right? So any time you have layer content ok whether this was an image layer adjustment layer what have you and you add a layer mask or you use the included baskin adjustment layer by painting with black on that mask you can think of it like you're cutting a hole through that layer so that you're seeing what's underneath it just like if you had construction paper all right, let's say you've got a red piece of construction paper and blue piece of construction paper you cut a star shape out of the top one you're going to see through to the red construction paper, right? So star's gonna look red even though that layers blue because you're cutting a hole out of that layer, enabling you to see what's underneath it and in our case that's where the original color lives is on the layer underneath this one so I'm just punching a hole to the black and white layer that lets you see the layer underneath. Does that make sense it's a fabulous effect now you will notice that I'm not being real careful over here where I paint that's because her background is so light anyway that I don't have to be careful but if the background were any other color than you would definitely any dizzy min and be very careful about revealing the color of every little strand of everything do you know what I mean? But for this particular image it isn't such a problem because that the background in which she was shot on it's so light ok. And you would be careful when you come in here to her hair. And you're revealing those shells and so on and so forth. But before long, you can make an incredibly, pretty sellable piece of art and there's. No better way, in my humble opinion to accentuate part of an image, then to drop the color out of the rest of it, and just have that one thing. Be in color. And we've got a several more images that will will do this on.