Black and White: it's not just for dogs anymore - Digital Black and White Photography with Adobe Photoshop

On the "Channel Mixer" dialog put a checkmark in the "MonoChrome" box at the bottom and the "Preview" should already be checked by default. Now, you'll notice that there are three slider bars, one each under Red, Green and Blue with a little box that displays the percentage. You can adjust these sliders as you see fit but the three numbers in the percentage box should add up to 100, give or take. (I would suggest leaving the "Constant" slider at the bottom alone. It controls the overall brightness of the photo and it's better to control that through an additional Adjustment Layer for "Levels" - more on Levels coming soon.)

She told me to "Slide this way..."

Remember when you were a kid and someone gave you a new toy. Wha'd you do with it? You played with it, that's what. Let's see: will it fit in my lunch box? Yes, so cool! What does this button do? Neat! What does it taste like? ...Ummm, marbles, not bad... Now that you have a new tool - TOY - to play with in Photoshop I'll give you a few suggestions. (Hint, you might want to read this after you've experimented/played with it for a while.)

Infrared Images

If you've ever looked through a B&W photography book/magazine you've probably noticed that some of them are a different "type" of B&W. They are usually fairly grainy, a blue sky is always very dark and green is very bright. That's an Infrared photo. To duplicate that in Photoshop go to the "Channel Mixer" adjustment layer and input these settings: Red = -30, Green = 200, Blue = -70. (This is a good starting point. You may want to alter these settings a little from one photo to another.) And there you have it.

Going Grainy

If you want to add that "grainy" effect then try this real quick:

• duplicate the "background" layer (From the menu bar: Layer -> Duplicate Layer, or from the Layers palette: right-click on the "background" layer and select "duplicate layer".)
• Before you add the grainyness, i.e. noise, you need to change the blending mode of the new layer. From the Layers palette, at the very top, is a drop-down menu. It should say "Normal" right now. Click on it and select "Overlay" - don't ask why because that's a whole article in itself.
• Now you want to add noise to it so go: Filter -> Noise ->
  The copyright of the article Black and White: it's not just for dogs anymore - Digital Black and White Photography with Adobe Photoshop in Digital Photography is owned by Dan Osborn. Permission to republish Black and White: it's not just for dogs anymore - Digital Black and White Photography with Adobe Photoshop in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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