{"id":511,"date":"2009-04-17T19:06:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-17T19:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emme.socialduchess.com\/2009\/04\/17\/photoshop-actions-and-tools-for-black-and-white\/"},"modified":"2009-04-17T19:06:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-17T19:06:00","slug":"photoshop-actions-and-tools-for-black-and-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everafter.emmechatterton.com\/index.php\/2009\/04\/17\/photoshop-actions-and-tools-for-black-and-white\/","title":{"rendered":"Photoshop Actions and Tools for Black and White"},"content":{"rendered":"


Here is a quick little comparison of some various techniques for converting to black and white in Photoshop (CS2).<\/p>\n

Here I’ve started with a straight out of the (point and shoot) camera shot of Mike, my great-uncle six times removed (or however that works) on the maternal Italian side. He did not want me to take a close-up, much less make it public, but that’s what he gets for being a cheeky. If you never hear from me again, just assume Big Mike sent me to sleep with the fishes. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Alright, let’s start off simple. This is a basic Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. Looks fine right? It’s black and white, what more could you want.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Another quick tool for converting to black and white is the Channel Mixer. Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer and then tick the ‘Monochrome’ box at the bottom of the pop-up. The results are often more interesting, though on this picture don’t look so great.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Channel Mixer option gives obviously a different result from a Desaturate, but you can also quickly and easily adjust the values… play around with the RGB and Constant sliders for a different result, which makes this a much more powerful and useful tool.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
I’m going to skip some more complicated stuff and move on to actions. One set I have been using a lot is by Alice_In_Underland from Deviantart. This action set can be downloaded here<\/a>. This first one is the Professional BW action.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Another action from the same set, this one is Professional BW Grain. I usually prefer this one (on people), but on this photo it came out too dark and would need further adjustments.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Moving on to the Pioneer Woman’s Actions, which I wrote about last time and can be found here<\/a><\/span> – this is from her first set, called PW’s B & W. The other Black and White action in this set is lame-o, it’s basically the same as just clicking Desaturation and then upping the contrast a teeny bit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
And from Pioneer Woman’s second action set, found on the same link as above, is one I like called Heartland. Technically, this is a sepia-tone and not a black and white, but let’s take a look anyway.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
And I’ll finish off with one action that I LURVE and want to use it on everything. I think I’ll make another post about it, but for now here is the Gum Bichromate Print action by Rawimage<\/a>, again from Deviantart. It takes a while to run and requires some following of instructions. And make sure your colors are set to black\/white before starting. (I actually don’t usually bother to import the background when it suggests doing so, I just click stop.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a quick little comparison of some various techniques for converting to black and white in Photoshop (CS2). Here I’ve started with a straight out of the (point and shoot) camera shot of Mike, my great-uncle six times removed (or however that works) on the maternal Italian side. He did not want me to take a close-up, much less make it public, but that’s what he gets for being a cheeky. If you never hear from me again, just assume Big Mike sent me to sleep with the fishes. \ud83d\ude42 Alright, let’s start off simple. This is a basic Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. Looks fine right? It’s black and white, what more could you want. Another quick tool for converting to black and white is the Channel Mixer. Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer and then tick the ‘Monochrome’ box at the bottom of the pop-up. The results are often more interesting, though on this picture don’t look so great. The Channel Mixer option gives obviously a different result from a Desaturate, but you can also quickly and easily adjust the values… play around with the RGB and Constant sliders for a different result, which makes this a much more powerful and useful tool. I’m going to skip some more complicated stuff and move on to actions. One set I have been using a lot is by Alice_In_Underland from Deviantart. This action set can be downloaded here. This first one is the Professional BW action. Another action from the same set, this one is Professional BW Grain. I usually prefer this one (on people), but on this photo it came out too dark and would need further adjustments. Moving on to the Pioneer Woman’s Actions, which I wrote about last time and can be found here – this is from her first set, called PW’s B & W. The other Black and White action in this set is lame-o, it’s basically the same as just clicking Desaturation and then upping the contrast a teeny bit. And from Pioneer Woman’s second action set, found on the same link as above, is one I like called Heartland. Technically, this is a sepia-tone and not a black and white, but let’s take a look anyway. And I’ll finish off with one action that I LURVE and want to use it on everything. I think I’ll make another post about it, but for now here is the Gum Bichromate Print action by Rawimage, again from Deviantart. It takes a while to run and requires some following of instructions. And make sure your colors are set to black\/white before starting. (I actually don’t usually bother to import the background when it suggests doing so, I just click stop.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adventures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everafter.emmechatterton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everafter.emmechatterton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everafter.emmechatterton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everafter.emmechatterton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everafter.emmechatterton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everafter.emmechatterton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everafter.emmechatterton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everafter.emmechatterton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everafter.emmechatterton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}