Converting to B&W / Gray Scale

Creed

Creed

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Doing some practice portrait shots and wanted to convert them to B&W but the only way I know how is to convert to gray scale in photo shop.

Can anyone advise if this is the best method? or if there are any guides / threads on converting colour to B&W that I have missed please let me know
 
Most people will use the channel mixer in Photoshop as it gives you a massive amount of options for fine tuning your images. It can be found in: IMAGE>ADJUSTMENTS>CHANNEL MIXER.
Firstly make sure to tick the monochrome check box & then play with the red, green & blue sliders until you get the desired effect.
As a guide, try to ensure that the sliders numbers make a total of 100 - eg: Red-10, Green-50, Blue-40 as this provides the most even tonal range. One final thing is to begin by taking the Red from 100% down to 0% & increasing the Green to 100% instead before you start as the green channel usually provides the most even midtones.

Hope this helps & I haven't confused you too much but just shout out if you have any problems :thumbs:
 
No that sounds good, I'll have to get a couple of my images and try converting via the channel mixer and the convert to grayscale option and sit them side by side to see the difference... I knew there had to be a more appropriate way to do it.
 
The channel mixer seems to the be most favoured in my experience, but as always, with photoshop there are 42 ways to skin a cat :D

There is also the new B&W adjustment layer in CS3, which is a great alternative to the channel mixer.
 
In PS2 You can just to CTRL Shift U to do a straight desaturate....

but then I guess you knew that
 
oldgit said:
In PS2 You can just to CTRL Shift U to do a straight desaturate....

but then I guess you knew that
Click to expand...

You guessed wrong :P didnt know that at all...
 
You can more or less the same control of the CS3 B&W adjustment layer in CS2 by creating a gradient map adjustment layer and then a hue/saturation adjustment layer between the orig image and the gradient map layer. Fiddle with the hue/saturation sliders until happy :)
 
TBH Im personally a suck it and see fan. I just fiddle with the sliders until Im happy.

Lately I've been playing with actual in-image adjustments. Rather than use the slider, have the dialog open and click on a tone in the image I want to lighten/darken, and drag. This adjusts the correct slider accordingly :)
 
Ha! Me, an expert? :embarrassed: I'm just an amateur :) A click and pray kinda guy :D

Learnt most of it on these here forums though :thumbs:
 
what would be usefull is if someone in the know could write a nice little tutorial with some example pictures. My problem is I look at my photo's using the convert to grayscale option and think "yeah they look ok" then look at other peoples B&W shots and wonder why mine don't look as good, could be better colour photo to start with though
 
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