All images © Rick Sammon
 

    When you remove the color and create a black-and-white image, you remove some of the reality from the scene. This can create a more artistic image. What’s more, a black-and-white image can, but not always, have more impact and appear more dramatic than a color photograph.
    In Photoshop CS3, it’s easy to create a beautiful black-and-white image.  That’s what I did for the opening image for this lesson of a cowboy whom I photographed in Forth Worth, Texas. Below, you’ll find the technique for creating a black-and-white image from a color file, and more! To illustrate these techniques, I’ll use a picture of a holy man whom I photographed in the Kingdom of Bhutan.

    Of course, I used Adjustment Layers (Layer > New Adjustment Layer) for my enhancements, as I recommend to all my workshop students when making adjustments. However, to save time and to save having to write Layer > New Adjustment Layer for each adjustment, I will go right to the Adjustment.
Let’s go.

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    Here is my original image. Sure, I like the saturated colors. However, as I do with   all my favorite images, I experimented with black-and-white imaging for creative possibilities.




    Subtle colors are the opposite of saturated colors—the kind of colors we used to get when shooting super-saturated films. For a softer, subtler image, I used the Hue/Saturation adjustment and moved the Saturation slider almost all the way to the left.




    As you can see, I still have a color photograph, but the less-intense colors produce a softer image.





    With my full-color image opened once again, I used the Black-and-White adjustment and adjusted the sliders, one for each tone/channel, until I was pleased with my image. Experiment with these sliders. They give you total control over the color channels in your image. That’s unlike using Mode > Grayscale, which changes all the channels with one fell swoop!




    Even with all those channel sliders at my fingertips, I felt that the image looked a bit flat. So, I boosted the Contrast using the Brightness/Contrast adjustment.  You’ll find that by boosting the contrast of your low-contrast images, such as the one I am sharing here, your pictures will look stronger and brighter.




    Here’s the black-and-white version of my color image after applying the above adjustments.




    There are other creative enhancements available to you in the Black-and-White dialog box. Click on the Tint box and you can change the Hue and Saturation of the image.





    After checking the Tint box, I played around with the Saturation slider to create a sepia-tone image.




    Photoshop also offers Image Effects – as Actions – to enhance your images.  However, upon opening the Actions palette, you will not see any Image Effects. You need to load them. That’s simple. Click on the small fly-out arrow at the top right of the Actions window. That opens a window in which Image Effects, along with other add-on Actions, are displayed. Simply click on Image Effects and they will now be listed, below your pre-loaded Actions,




    Here is how the Aged Photo Action enhanced my full-color image of the holy man.

    I encourage you to experiment with black-and-white photography. Not only can you see beautiful images on your monitor and your Website and Web galleries, but with today’s inkjet printers, you can make beautiful prints.
    

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    Rick Sammon has published 28 books, including: Face to Face — The Complete Guide for Photographing People, Rick Sammon’s Idea to Image, Rick Sammon’s Complete Guide to Digital Photography 2.0, Rick Sammon’s Travel and Nature Photography and Rick Sammon’s Digital Imaging Workshops. 

Rick teaches dozens of workshops and gives seminars—covering shooting, scanning, saving, enhancing, sharing and printing—each year. Visit www.ricksammon.com for more information.

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