Home Forums Explore Media Photography Digital Manipulation Discussions Kelby’s High Contrast B&W conversion

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  • #470517
    Anonymous

        I offered to post a thread about creating a high contrast B&W conversion. It comes from an old (Photoshop CS2) Scott Kelby book, but remains my favorite B&W technique. BTW, I highly recommend Kelby’s books – they are full of useful information, simply and clearly explained, that will help you improve your final images a lot.

        First, I apologize for any inevitable and embarrassing typos that remain herein.

        These steps work in Photoshop as far back as PSCS2, probably work with all later Photoshop versions, and should work with any photo-editing software that features Gradient Map and Channel Mixer. Note that not every photo is a good candidate for this conversion.

        Kelby’s steps are:

        1) Open the image in Photoshop

        2) Press the letter D to set the foreground color to black, Then from Create A new Adjustment Layer, choose Gradient map. You don’t need to do anything else here – just click on OK

        3) This simple step usually gives you a better grayscale conversion than choosing Grayscale from the Image menu.

        3) But assuming it isn’t yet looking quite the way you want, create another adjustment layer, this time Channel Mixer.

        4) Click on the Monochrome checkbox to make sure you get grayscale tweaks, not color tints.

        5) Still in Channel Mixer, lower the Constant slider to darken the entire photo. Kelby suggests setting it to -8. Then set the Red channel to around 75%. Note: these amounts work for many images, but with others you’ll want to vary your settings a bit, as you’ll see below.

        6) Next you increase the Blue and Green channels to make them brighter. How much do you increase them? It depends on the image. Kelby makes the simple but very logical suggestion that you drag the sliders to the right and continue dragging as long as the image keeps looking better. Then stop. Do this with both the Green and the Blue channels. Often you’ll need to go back and fine tune these adjustments.

        Kelby presents two alternate versions (worth trying, but I’ve seldom used them):

        A1) Go to the Layers Palette and drag the Channel Mixer adjustment layer below the Gradient Map layer. I will look different; maybe better, maybe not. In this case it didn’t improve the image.

        A2) Click on the Background layer in the Layers Palette, then choose Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. This desaturates the Background layer. Again, it may improve the image or it may not. In this case, it made very little difference.

        Example A – birdhouse (taken Feb, 2019):

        Original image:

        After applying Gradient Map:

        After applying Channel Mixer (I ended up with Constant Slider at -8, Red Channel at +66, Green at +68, and Blue at +62):

        Final image after toning down (probably not enough) some of the blown-out whites and applying a strong lightening Curves adjustment layer that I restricted to just the bird peeking out by filling this adjustment layer with black (to hide its effect) then painting on the layer mask over the bird with white (to reveal the effect at 100%) and grays (to reveal the effect at less than 100%):

        Example B – wood texture (taken way back in December of 2004):

        Original image:

        After applying Gradient Map:

        Final image after applying Channel Mixer adjustment layer (Constant slider at -9, Red Channel at -7, Green at =72, Blue at +43; all with the diagonal shadow not showing the effect because I painted over it on the layer mask with black; then I duplicated this Channel Mixer adjustment layer, effectively doubling the effect; then duplicated it again, painted on this layer mask with black around the periphery to hide the effect there, and reduced the opacity of this 3rd Channel Mixer layer to 39% to lessen its effect.

        Example C – hummer (taken early this week):

        Surprisingly, this image looked pretty darn good after just the Gradient Map, so the Channel Mixer settings were slight.

        Original image:

        After applying Gradient Map:

        Final image after: a) applying a Channel Mixer adjustment layer (sorry, I didn’t record the settings); b) duplicating this Channel Mixer adjustment (which doubled the effect); and c) a Curves adjustment layer to hide or lessen the “high contrast” effect in some areas and to apply it in other areas (by filling the layer mask with black to hide the effect, painting on some areas with white to show the effect at full strength, and painting with shades of gray to partially show the effect:

        The added adjustment layers (mostly Curves) aren’t part of Kelby’s B&W technique, but I included them because they are a common part in my work process and often provide effectivel tweaks towards the goal of getting my final images looking the way I envision them. I especially recommend painting on adjustment layer masks to control where in your images, and to what extent, the adjustments appear.

        #797908

        Thank you, Dave, for the well written directions. It sounds simple enough and your results show that it really works well. The Anna photo really came out a stunner. What aweseome contrast that has.

        I shall give it a try. I use to have Silver Effects Pro but lost it when I got the new computer.

        Photography is the art of observation. It has little to to with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them. Elliott Erwitt
        Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, Zuiko 14-150 mm zoom, Zuiko 2.8 60mm macro, Sigma 2.8 Fish Eye. Nikon D5100

        #797907
        Anonymous

            You’re welcome, Lorell.

            Have fun with this, and post what you create.

            BTW, the color “Anna” photo happened to be have strong values contrast so the tweaks I applied with this technique were minimal – just a few localized areas were adjusted to help the bird stand out from the background since color couldn’t do it.

            As I said, not every photo is well suited to this conversion technique, and apparently some don’t really need it much.

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