Black and White in Photoshop II - Black and White in Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Lightroom - page 147

Black and White Stand-alone Feature

Photoshop has always of ered many ways to convert color images to black
and white, each having its own unique advantages and quirks. However, none
has ever been particularly intuitive.

Photoshop of ers a great deal for black and white photographers: recent
changes to the power and usability of selective editing (and previewing via
the rei ne edge controls); a myriad of changes to camera raw, new ways to
dodge, burn and saturate; curves and the incredible advent of smart i lters.
Specii c to black and white, CS3 improved greatly on the popular channel
mixer method of converting to monochrome. In Photoshop the experience is
simple, easier and faster.

For readers of this topic, however, nothing is likely to be more exciting, useful,
easy or powerful as the features and functionality found in the Stand-alone
Black and White feature introduced in Photoshop CS3. When the Photoshop
team looked at making a black and white feature, they surveyed the
landscape, listened to user requests and threw in a bonus on-image control
compliments of the family's newest application, Adobe Photoshop
Lightroom.

Note:
First, it is always a good
idea to get a good,
working exposure
before applying any
sort of black and white
conversion. See
“Chapter 2: Capture in
color” page 29 for tips.

The feature exists as both a regular (pixel-based) image adjustment and as
a new addition to a growing list of non-destructive adjustment layers (now
readily available in the default interface, LIVE!)

Let us step through a common conversion:

1. In the interest of best practices, we will use an adjustment layer: using
either the new Adjustment panel in CS4 Black & White, or
by using the l y-out menu from the Layers palette.

2. By default, Photoshop gives a nice set of i xed conversion numbers.

3. At this point, you can choose to use the Auto button to map contrast
amongst various tones. The ef ects of “auto” will vary from image to image,
but, in essence, Photoshop is adjusting sliders to give a well-contrasted
adjustment.

4. For further control, each of the individual sliders can be moved to control
the tonal value of that region.

5. The best control is the ability to interact directly with the document. In
this feature, you need only to click upon any region of the image and then
move right or left to lighten or darken it! You will notice that whichever
region you click upon maps to the appropriate slider in the black and
white control.