Convert Color Images to Professional Black and White Portraits Black and white conversions - Create stunning black and white photographs from your color images by following our easy photoshop tutorials. Like many other things you wish to do to edit your photographs, there are always a number of ways by doing them and changing images from a color image to a black and white image is no exception. We will show you 3 ways of changing your color photo's into professional quality black and white portraits. We will first show you the quickest and the easiest way by using desaturate in photoshop. The second will show you how to change your images to black and white by using Luminosity and the third and last way will show you by using the Channel Mixer. If you are a beginner to photoshop we will have you headed towards being a PROFESSIONAL in no time with our quick and easy tutorials. In these tutorial we have used a photograph taken on our trip to the dandanong rangers near Melbourne Australia. The photograph is of an old historical building called Miss Marples Tea Room. Original color image Original Photo Black & white image Edited Photo Method 1 - Desaturate

Step 2:
We now need to add another layer below the background layer. Photoshop will not allow us to add another layer below the one we have so we need to rename the background layer. To rename the layer you need to double click on the word background. This will automatically rename it to "layer 0".

Now to add our new layer. To add our new layer we will use a keyboard trick that will automatically place the new layer under the layer we already have. For windows users hold down the "CTRL" key on your keyboard and click on the (create a new layer) icon as shown below.

You should now see two layers. The top layer called "layer 0" and the one underneath it called "layer 1".

Step 3:
We will now color layer 1 white. To put the default colors back press the letter "D" on your keyboard. This will make sure that the background and foreground colors are black and white.

Make sure that "layer 1" is selected on the layers pallet. If it's not simply click on it. It should be highlighted. To make "layer 1" white simply press (CTRL + Backspace) on your keyboard.

Now click on the layer with the image on it (layer 0) by clicking it. It will be highlighted. We will now use the layers blend mode to change our image to a black and white portrait. By default the layers blend mode is set to normal as shown below.

Now click on the down pointing arrow next to the word normal in the layers pallet box and then click on "Luminosity".

Your photo should now be in black and white. But this is not the finish. We have one more step until we are done.

Step 4:
We are going to do another keyboard trick. This trick will combine both layers together onto a brand new layer. On your keyboard press (Shift + Ctrl + Alt + E) When you do this you should see another layer appear called "layer 2".

Take a further look at my screenshot below. Notice that I have changed a couple of extra things in the layers pallet window. I have changed the blend mode to "Multiply" and the Opacity to "10%". You may do this to your image also. First set the blend mode to "Multiply". This will dark your image, then play with the opacity setting until you are happy with the way your photograph looks.

Congratulations! You have now created a stunning professional quality black and white portrait. Don't forget to save your image!

This is our third and final tutorial showing you how to take a color image and turn it into a black and white photograph. The above two tutorials are great if you are just after a quick way of converting your images to black and white. If you are a professional photographer, the chances are that you will want more control over how your images will look in the final result. This last tutorial will give you just that! Complete control.

Step 1:
Once again, open your original color photo in photoshop. All the colors in the image are made up of a blend of "red, green and blue".

Step 2:
We are now going to take a look at the channels pallet. To open your channels pallet click on (Window > Channels). You will see the channels pallet open like the one shown below.

You will see that there are 4 channels. A blue channel, a green channel, a red channel and an RGB channel. The RGB channel is the other 3 channels combined which makes up your color photograph.

We are going to be using the 3 color channels (blue, green and red) to create our professional black and white image.

Step 3:
You will need to go back to your layers palette. Simply click on the layers tab on top of the palette window. We will now open the channel mixer. Click on (create new fill or adjustment layer) and then click on (channel mixer). This will open the channel mixer window.

In the channel mixer window you will see at the bottom a box with the word "Monochrome" Click on the checkbox to select it. This will straight away take the color out of your image, giving you a black and white photo.

Step 4:
This is where you have complete control. You will customize the look of your image by adjusting how much impact the colors have on the image, by adjusting the percentage on the red, green and blue slide bar. The general rule of this method is to have each colors percentage add up to 100% when calculated together.

With my image I have used the settings as shown in the image below. Red +60%, Green +20% and Blue +20%. These three amounts add up to 100% and give me quite a nice looking black and white image.

Step 5:
Play around with these settings until you are happy with the results of your own image. Have fun. Don't forget to save your image when you are finished.

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