Black and white photography has always been powerful and it has stood the test of time, even against its contemporary color counterpart. When working with black and white, you must incorporate a different set of rules and techniques. With the lack of color the balances of shape and contrast are made to work harder in order to convey the story or set the mood. However, once this is achieved it is striking.

Some digital cameras come with a black-and-white mode, but even if yours does not, black and white can still be done. Many times it even works better to shoot in color and convert to black and white in editing. The Photoshop software provides an amazing variety of techniques for converting color to black and white, otherwise called grayscale. These techniques allow you to control this ability to a degree that would be challenging to match from behind the lens.

The simplest way of changing color to black and white is to switch the mode to grayscale (Image > Mode > Grayscale). While this can work, there are other methods to use. Lets take a look at three other alternatives that will convert color to grayscale (black and white):

The first method is desaturation. This is the removal the visible color information while keeping the RGB status of the file. This would allow you to add a tint at a later point without having to change color mode again. Follow Steps: Image > Adjustments > Desaturate (or press Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + U).

A downside of desaturation is the potentially a flat, uninspiring copy of the original. Improve this mentally dividing the picture into parts and following these steps. With this you can increase textures in one area by darkening the shadows and midtones, or increase contrast in another to remove haziness. Take a feathered section to work with and press Ctrl/Cmd + J to copy and paste the selection to a new layer. Add a 'Levels Adjustment Layer' to it, combining the two layers as a clipping mask. Drag the Black and Gray point markers toward the right to bring out texture or to the left to decrease. If you see a dividing line ater making the Levels adjustment, remove by adding a layer mask to the newly made level (set to Reveal All) and paint on the mask in black until the edge disappears using a soft brush at a low opacity setting.

While a Levels adjustment layer would add contrast, a different method would be: Follow Steps: Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves This will add a Curves adjustment layer to the background layer. Apply the curve shown to increase midtone contrast, but at slight decrease to the highlights and shadows, however this lessens the haziness effect.

Imagine a photo of the sky. Going to the Layers palette, click the Channels tab, then click on the Red channel. The image seen be the darkening of the blue-tinted areas the same result that a red filter over the lens would have created. For a comparison, click on the Green channel for a result similar to the Red channel but less pronounced. Last, look at the Blue channel, it will be lighter, since most of the image is blue. With only some simple clicks, we have three different ready-made black-and-white effects.

After choosing the filter effect you desire, use this keyboard shortcut sequence to make it into a new document: Ctrl/Cmd + A (selects all) Ctrl/Cmd + C (copies the selection to the clipboard) Ctrl/Cmd + N (creates a new document of the same proportions as whatever we have on the clipboard. The document will also be a grayscale as we only have one channel selected) Enter/Return (to confirm the settings. No changes are necessary) Ctrl/Cmd + V (to paste the contents of the clipboard to a new layer) You can then use Levels and Curves to fine-tune the result.

Use this method if the automatic setting of the channels is not what you are looking for in order to increase the range of tones or strengthen the color effects. Choose the channel you desire and keep it active and go to Image > Calculations. If the Red channel was active, the Red channel will appear in the Calculations dialog box. Source 1 and 2 are set to the same document, layer, and Red channel, which means they will all be combined for the calculation to take place. Set the blending drop-down to Multiply, working in the same way as the normal layer blend methods. Multiply will darken the image, but based on the red channel. As a result blue elements or elements with a blue cast will become darker than other elements. Set the Result drop-down box to New Document to create a new multichannel file based on the calculated result.

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