What is B&W conversion

davidbridges

davidbridges

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David Bridges
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Hi,

Excuse my ignorance for a few minutes.

Ive heard a load of people saying the words black and white conversion. I was looking at a picture and somebody said maybe with a better black and white conversion the picture could of been better. What exactly is a B&W conversion, because i thought if i went onto photoshop then just desaturated it, that would do the trick, is there anything else i should know.

Thanks for reading

Dave
 
Desaturaing is the worst way of converting your colour images to B&W. There are a number of ways to do it in photoshop (depends on the version you have).

In CS2 the best way is using the Channel mixer (Image>Adjustments>Channel Mixer). Click the greyscale icon (bootom left) then tweak the RGB value channels to create your B&W image. You can creat some amazing B&W images with much more contrast than just desaturating. When using channel mixer, it's using the colours in your image to increase/decrease brightness and amount of each colour which in turn creates more contrasty Black & Whites. the value of the three channels should add up to around 100. Mine are normally about 110 (whicj makes for a conversion that has more contrast.

In CS3 the new Black & White option (Image>Adjustments>Black & White) allows you to control the strength and brightness of each of the colours in your image to create your B&W conversion.

Play around and you'll see a huge difference in your B&W images.
 
ooh link wars lol :lol: :p
 
oooh but your's is very good too adW ;)
 
Isn't there a filter or selection on photoshop just do "black and white" Would this produce any different results to taking the photo in black and white mode on the camera?


Thanks
 
jigga1980 - if you use the B/W option on your camera, you lose the colour information in the shot (unless you shoot in RAW). As you'll see from the links above it is possible to convert colour pics in many different ways to produce different effects. You'll have more choice if you retain as much information as possible in shot.
 
jigga1980 said:
Isn't there a filter or selection on photoshop just do "black and white" Would this produce any different results to taking the photo in black and white mode on the camera?


Thanks
Click to expand...


The B&W option in Ps is hugely controllable and has amazing power. Way better than you would ever get just taking an image in B&W.
 
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