1.) First they had a SCENE (what they were photographing),
2.) Second they had colored filters and
3) Third, they had black-and-white film.

That’s exactly, the way I’d like you to envision this scenario.

1.) The “scene” is the basic image or our background layer.
2.) The colored filter is our middle layer (the HSB 1 layer),
3.) And finally the black-and-white film is the top layer, HSB 2, since that layer displays only black-and-white (like B/W film).

So now, we’re going start altering the “filter” colors, via the HSB 1 layer, and see how the differing filter colors affect our B/W output image.

Altering the Black-to-White Conversion

So, open the HSB 1 layer by double clicking the layer. Now, just to start with, increase the Saturation pointer to about 10. Now, here’s the part I’ve been dying for you to see, slowly slide the Hue-slider to the right, then to the left; see your image dramatically change? Do you see that some variations look MUCH better to you than others?

Fig. 7 As the Hue slider is moved to the left/right the image changes greatly.

Notice that you must move the Hue-slider slowly? Even slight changes in the hue, our “filter” can really change the color to black-and-white conversion. We started with the saturation at about “10”, right? The saturation adjustment controls the INTENSITY of the effect. In most cases, you’re safe to adjust the Saturation slider from “-15” to “15”. Some scenes can handle a little more, but soon little blotches will appear and ruin your entire image. Usually, I find values between -5 to 10 to work well. DON’T FRET ABOUT LOW CONTRAST RIGHT NOW, THIS IS A TWO-STEP PROCESS, THE CONTRAST WILL BE FIXED SOON. (I’m dying for you to see that part, too.)

Fig 8. Note the changes in the water and the center rear building from Fig.7.

I wish I had a setting I could suggest you use, I don’t. Since all photographs respond differently to black-and-white conversion, you’ll have to choose a setting that pleases you. You’re the artist; …so art.

Fig. 9 Deciding on the best rendition is the most difficult task.

I’m hope you’re thinking, “Yeah, but the buildings look better at one setting and the sky looks much better at another.” To which I reply, “Thanks for not calling me ‘Dude’”. But lets see if we can help you there:

Concentrate on your subject, in this case, we’ll call the buildings our subject. Get your conversion looking pretty good for the buildings, and let’s see if we can help with the sky.

Altering the Conversion Selectively

In your Hue/Saturation dialog box (HSB 2), notice that the box at the top is set to “Master” (Fig. 5). Meaning that we’ve been altering the entire image; but now, we’re going to change just one hue (the sky). Click next to the box that says “Master”, and set it to any color (I don’t know, choose “red”), it does not matter. Photoshop will figure out the correct hue for us. Notice the sliders at the very bottom of the dialog box, they’re set to define a range, which we’ll change in just a second. Notice the range is defined by two parallel bars and two small triangles. Photoshop uses this method to describe ABSOLUTLY anything between the straight bars and “feather” the change out to the triangles. Remember Fig. 5?

Fig. 10 The red circles are the areas discussed in the text.

Begin by sliding the triangles and bars together, close them completely (Fig. 10). Now, notice you have an eyedropper highlighted at the lower right of the dialog box? The three eyedroppers are as follows: the first eyedropper defines one single color, the second eyedropper (with the “+” sign) means “and ADD these colors; the third eyedropper (with the minus sign) “but subtract these colors”.

To define our sky, click anywhere on the sky with the first eyedropper. You’ll notice the blues become selected and the parallel bars change position to reflect our first choice.

Fig. 11 The Hue/Saturation Dialog box after our first click on the sky.
Note the position of the sliders at the bottom and the RED we choose from the Edit menu has changed to BLUE.

Because the sky is, of course, comprised of several shades of bluish-hue we now click the eyedropper with the “+” sign (remember it “adds more colors”?) and drag the eyedropper around the sky as to define the entire range used in our sky.

Fig. 12 Click the middle eyedropper and drag the eyedropper around the rest of the sky to select all the colors in the sky.

Fig 13. AFTER dragging the middle eyedropper around the entire sky you can drag the Hue slider and adjust ONLY the sky.

Now start adjusting the hue slider and see that we’re only changing the sky. You can repeat this as many times as you’d like, changing the hues in the trees, flags, etc.

Fig. 13A Examples of altering only the bluish shades.

Review:

• Moving the hue slider in the Hue/Sat adjustment layer changes the interpretation of the conversion.
• We can selectively alter a specific color by defining the colors via the eyedroppers.

Now, I remind you why there’s chocolate AND vanilla, this is my interpretation of this image. But, see how overall, the photograph just looks a little dark? We want out picture to have good contrast, but not be too dark to see detail in the lower quartertones. How would we fix that? We can’t make overall adjustments to the background image now, as that would alter the color information and change all the work we’ve done. Hmmmm…..

Creating a Composite Layer and Increasing the Overall Contrast

Here’s a great trick and a favorite of mine. Highlight our top layer by clicking on it once in the layers pallet; in our case, that’s good ol’ HSB 2, we want to create a new blank layer on top of the stack. We can do that by LAYERS > NEW > LAYER and click OK in the dialog box that appears.

Now, we have a new top layer that’s blank. What we’d really like to do now is place the bottom three layers into one, single, COMPOSITE layer, without affecting our original layers. Piece of cake. Make sure your new layer is highlighted, and then press (PC) CNTL-ALT-SHIFT-E (there’s a mouthful). Presto! Without changing the original layers, we’ve created a single layer that has our entire current picture in it. Snazzy, huh?

With that behind us, we’re back to our mission of lightening the entire image just a tad. In my case, I decided to just use levels to lighten things up a bit. So, I made sure the composite layer was highlighted, I pressed CNTL L, which brought up the Levels dialog box and then I moved the middle slider to the left slightly; from 1.00 to 1.10. It did the trick.

Now, time to restore a little contrast to this dog. We’re going to use the Unsharp Mask to do it. Yep, the Unsharp Mask, this is in my top ten favorite tricks: Make sure the current layer, the composite layer is highlighted, go to the Filters Menu and open the Unsharp Mask Filter dialog box. We are going to REVERSE the way we’d normally use this filter. Start with "Amount " about 30, the Radius around 180, and the Threshold set to zero. In my case, I wanted to boost contrast just a little, so I elected to use Amount=16, Radius=180.0, threshold=0. When using this technique, it helps me to click the preview box on and off, so I can actually see the amount of change I’m making. This techniques works on color images just as well.

Fig. 14 Suggested starting values for contrast adjustment

.
Fig. 15 Before and after USM contrast adjustment.

Well, there you have it. Stick a fork in it we’re done. This is the time when one would use his hand tools if there were desired.

If you like those images where they have a single object in color and the remainder in black-and-white, like me. Here's how to achieve that effect properly.

1) Do the steps shown above first,
2) Click the Background layer to make it current,
3) Make the selection of the areas you want to keep in color,
4) Press CNTL J (which creates a new layer of the selected area),
5) Then, just drag the new layer to the top of the layers stack and
6) Change the blending mode of the new layer to “color”. (Very important)

I personally think the above method is far superior to the old “make-a-selection-and-desaturate-everything-else" plan. See:

Fig. 16 Creating a proper black-and-white with a splash of color.

There's a zillion different way of doing this, I like this way by far the best. After you do this method a couple of times, you'll be able to perform it within a two or three minutes. The description above was quite detailed, but after you get a grip on this way, you'll quickly be able to perform conversions fast and properly.

Happy converting.

Please let me know your opinion of what you just read. I'm always trying to improve these tutorials so people can learn more quickly.

Email me here (Ray@RaymondShay.com)

Or, if you'd rather, use THIS, it's completely anonymous.

Oh, and Thank You!