Creative Use of Color - Beginning Photo Retouching and Restoration Using GIMP - page 114

Tutorial 15: Converting Color to Black and White (No. 1)
The first method of converting a color image to black and white is relatively straightforward and will
generally work well for making quick conversions.
To convert this image, follow these steps:

Open the image ( Ch5_old church ) found in the Practice Images folder. 1.

2. Duplicate the background layer and rename it Black and White Layer.

3. Open the Desaturate dialog box (Image Menu ➤ Colors ➤ Desaturate). This

is different from the Hue/Saturation dialog. It offers a choice of shades of gray,
based on Lightness, Luminosity, or Average (Figure 5-2 ).

Figure 5-2. The Desaturate dialog offers some limited but often useful options for converting color
images to black and white

Determining which option to choose really depends on what looks best to you. As with many aspects
of image editing, there is an element of subjectivity involved. Personally, I thought the Luminosity setting
looked the best, so I chose this option. It works very well for a quick conversion. (Figure 5-3 ).