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I am looking for what different techniques people use with photoshop to turn thier images into B&W images.

So let rip with your ideas and tips.

Colour control through the channel mixers, hue saturation...

If you're bored, give OptikVerve Labs' Virtual Photographer a try...

This was posted back in may...........

By setting saturation to minus 100 then change to CALIBRATE, use the sliders here to get the result that you require, the sliders operate as if there was colour, but in black and white, this method gives very fine control over your image. And no need for layers and change it as much as you like......This is a non destructive method......

Have fun
bp

from the Russell Brown Site.......

Hello - and i'm new on this board -

Photoshop offers so many different ways to do this -
image > ajust > desaturate
image > mode > grayscale
hsb > saturation slider..

but with all those above methods, you still need to ajust your histogram to get the wanted highlight shadows and midtones - curves does a good job at that. you can either play with the curve itself, give auto a try or manually set you black & white points on the image using the eye dropper.

but as mentioned above, my all time favorite is the channel mixer ajustement layer.. that way, you don't lose your original and you get more control over your zones. hope this helps a bit.

In the PS plugin above you don't really have as much control as in Adj layers Channel mixer, but it works well if you know what you're doing, and only want a subtle changes.

Also I always add a hue saturation adj layer, with a little saturation and generally a slight yellow or blue or red hue depending on my mood at the time.

Roboh gave me some great ansel adams values the other day.

red 160
green 140
blue -200

but you have to be in the channel mixer to know the values, the plugin doesn't give you those values.

The other nice thing about layers is you can adjust how much effect the layer has on the actual picture.

I’ve tried heaps of different conversion methods over my PS ride.
I came across a plug-in a few weeks ago that doses the best job I’ve come across to date.
You get to choose from a list of B&W film types to convert to.
Well worth a down load & have a play with.

http://www.photo-plugins.com/Plugins/Pl ... rsion.html

Cheers
Ray

I almost always use the Channels Mixer, selecting the "monochrome" checkbox I adjust the RGB sliders to taste (making sure that the total percentage adds up to 100% - ie. Red 30%, Green 60%, Blue 10% OR any combination of the three to total 100%)

You soon notice that this gives you a large scope in which to convert your colour into B&W - depending on what look you're going for...

Interesting to see what other people use...