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How To Create The Best Color To Black And White Conversion Previews

The fully saturated image

light on dark pieces of paper - a combination that can only be made by localizing different conversions

dark on light pieces of paper - a combination that can only be made by localizing different conversions

To find the best color to black-and-white solution an image contains, it’s important to explore all of your options. One technique will quickly show you more options than any other – Photoshop’s dual adjustment layers (a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer below a Channel Mixer adjustment layer).

To preview all possibilities dynamically, move the Hue slider all the way to the left and all the way to the right.

But wait, there’s more.

As you’re previewing the many options available to you, remember you can localize the effects with masks. You can go beyond what you see in one mix by combining any of the tones you see in all of the mixes.

Few people can remember all of the possible combinations. So, save multiple copies with different settings and compare them. There’s nothing like seeing many options, side-by-side, to confirm you’re committing to the best solution.

You can read about this technique in more detail here.

The two solutions above can only be achieved by converting separate areas of the image differently using masks.

The solutions below show the different global conversions which can be combined.

Note no dodging and burning was used to create these solutions. Dodging and burning can’t produce these extreme effects, but it can be used to further enhance them.

Also, note this technique is not useful for semi-neutral images; an image has to have significant saturation in at least one color to benefit from this technique.

 


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The Best Way To Convert Your Images From Color To B&W Using Photoshop

Full-color image

Global B&W conversion

B&W conversion locally optimized for foreground

The color transformation necessary to produce the results

 

With so much power available during Raw processing (with Lightroom or Camera Raw) when converting color to black-and-white, you’re right to ask, “Why use Photoshop?” It’s a question worth asking every time you make a black-and-white conversion. And there’s a simple answer – when you want to convert the same color in two separate areas of an image differently. (Note: this technique is not useful for semi-neutral images; an image has to have significant saturation in at least one color to benefit from this technique.)

Photoshop can localize black-and-white conversions with masks. Often, the masks you need to do this will be extremely simple. But, for the rare occasions when you need to make a more complex selection, Photoshops’s robust masking capabilities are there for you.

Here's how to do it.


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24 Great Quotes On The Color Brown

Enjoy this collection of quotes on the color brown.

Which is your favorite? Have one to add? Leave a comment!

“I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colors. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.”
- Winston Churchill

“Remember to be gentle with yourself and others. We are all children of chance, and none can say why some fields will blossom while others lay brown beneath the August sun.”
- Kent Nerburn

"Brown is a sober and sedate colour, grave and solemn, but not dismal, and contributes to the expression of strength, stability, and solidity, — vigour, warmth, and rusticity, — and in minor degree to the serious, the sombre, and the sad; not with the painter only, but also with the rhetorician and poet, with whom, nevertheless, many of the broken colours are yet "airy nothings" and "without a name."
- George Field

“Nevertheless, this external sound turns into internally powerful sound. When properly used brown paint produces indescribable inner beauty, self-restraint.”
- Wassily Kandinsky

“A baton of light across the bracken redeemed the reputation of the color brown with fiery reds and yellows.”
- Ian McEwan

“The color brown, I realized, is anything but nondescript. It comes in as many hues as there are colors of earth, which is commonly presumed infinite.”
- Barbara Kingsolver

"Brown is neither one of the basic color perceptions nor a primary color used in color mixtures, but for human beings it is constantly present both in nature and in their everyday surroundings. It is the color of the earth itself — of rocks and sand, of the bark of trees, of the fur of animals. In that sense, at least, it could be called the basic color of everyday life."
- Kunio Fukuda

"Brown is the color of hearth and home — of dried herbs and stone-ground bread and freshly baked cookies. It represents all of the nurturing, life-sustaining, down-to-earth qualities of terra firma, the very shade of earth itself. Just as in the sturdy oak, brown represents roots, a steady, stable source of security, comfort, and normalcy. It is the color of fertile soil and plowed earth, buckskin and rawhide, weathered redwood, bison and mustang, frontier land — rugged and outdoorsy. It is pine cone and bracken, chipmunk and acorn, beaver and doe. Brown is considered a classic shade of solid substance."
- Leatrice Eiseman

“My skin is kind of sort of brownish pinkish yellowish white. My eyes are greyish blueish green, but I’m told they look orange in the night. My hair is reddish blondish brown, but it’s silver when it’s wet, and all the colors I am inside have not been invented yet.”
- Shel Silverstein


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10 Tips To Help You Master Layer Masks In Adobe Photoshop

“In this video, Julieanne demonstrates ten essential shortcuts for working with Layer Masks, including how to add, delete, invert, move, reposition, copy, target, disable, change the density, and add a non-destructive feather to soften the edges of a mask.”

Follow up with her fundamentals of working with layers.

View more of Julieanne’s videos.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.

29 Great Quotes On The Color Gray

Enjoy this collection of quotes on the color gray.

Which is your favorite? Have one to add? Leave a comment!

 

"Life isn't black or white, it's all sorts of shades of grey."
- Nicky Morgan

"There's so much grey to every story - nothing is so black and white."
- Lisa Ling

"Life isn't black and white. It's a million gray areas, don't you find?"
- Ridley Scott

"There are infinite shades of grey. Writing often appears so black and white."
- Rebecca Solnit

"For grey matter, there is no black and white. If you think in black and white, then you do not use enough brain functions."
- Peter Kabakci

"The color of truth is gray."
- Andre Gide

"Compromise in colors is grey."
- Edi Rama

“The color grey is a reference to ambiguity, speculation, and nebulous deconstruction without solution.”
— Philip Bachman

"Gray is the color... the most important of all... absent of opinion, nothing, neither/nor."
- Gerhard Richter

“Grey has no agenda. . . . Grey has the ability, that no other color has, to make the invisible visible.”
– Roma Tearne

“One must first allow the presence of gray to take root, then release it to weigh its absence before being certain about anything.”
– Reena Doss


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5 Reasons to use Smart Filters in Adobe Photoshop

“In this video, Julieanne demonstrates five reasons to use Smart Filters in Photoshop, including how to edit, mask, stack, move, duplicate, and change blend mode and opacity of Smart Filters in Photoshop.”

View more of Julieanne’s videos.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.

33 Great Quotes On The Color White

Enjoy this collection of quotes on the color white.

Which is your favorite? Have one to add? Leave a comment!

"God paints in many colors; but he never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when he paints in white."
- G. K. Chesterton

"Black is the absence of all color. White is the presence of all colors. I suppose life must be one or the other."
- Mary Balogh

“White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gorgeously, as when He paints in white.”

- G K Chesterton

"White is the most wonderful color because within it you can see all the colors of the rainbow. For me, in fact, it is the color which in natural light, reflects and intensifies the perception of all of the shades of the rainbow, the colors which are constantly changing in nature, for the whiteness of white is never just white; it is almost always transformed by light and that which is changing; the sky, the clouds, the sun and the moon."
- Richard Meier

"White is associated with purity because the entire spectrum is functioning in unity. White is a healing color."
Tae Yun Kim

"I have said that black has it all. White too. Their beauty is absolute. It is the perfect harmony."
- Coco Chanel

"If there is one word that makes creative people different from others, it is the word complexity. Instead of being an individual, they are a multitude. Like the color white that includes all colors, they tend to bring together the entire range of human possibilities within themselves."
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

"When you glaze on a bright white ground it is like looking through color rather than at it – like looking through stained glass."
- Fred Machetanz

"Never use pure white; it doesn't exist in nature."
- Aldro T. Hibbard

“Nothing is black or white.”
- Nelson Mandela

"Black and white creates a strange dreamscape that color never can."
- Jack Antonoff

"Put variety in white."
- Charles Webster Hawthorne

"Renoir said once that nothing was so difficult, and at the same time so exciting, to paint, as white on white."
- Ambroise Vollard


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6 Benefits Of Using Smart Objects In Adobe Photoshop

In this video, Julieanne will walk through six benefits of working with Smart Objects in Photoshop, including transforming and distorting Smart Objects, editing and replacing the contents of Smart Objects, creating duplicated instances, and more!”

View more of Julieanne’s videos.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.

Two Generations Father & Son Talk About Their Art Online With Jennifer Schlesinger Of Obscura Gallery

Online Talk

Hosted by Obscura Gallery, Father Paul Caponigro and son John Paul Caponigro will share their photographs, talk about their work, and answer your questions.

 

Inquire about prints here.

View the Virtual Exhibit here.

Purchase the printed Catalog here.

Receive the ebook Images & Quotes here

 

Paul Caponigro

John Paul Caponigro

28 Great Quotes On The Color Black

Enjoy this collection of quotes on the color black.

Which is your favorite? Have one to add? Leave a comment!

 

"Black is real sensation, even if it is produced by entire absence of light. The sensation of black is distinctly different from the lack of all sensation."
- Hermann von Helmhoz

"Black is always elegant. It is the most complete color in the whole world, made of all the colors in the palette."
- Ricardo Tisci

"Women think of all colors except the absence of color. I have said that black has it all. White too. Their beauty is absolute. It is the perfect harmony."
- Coco Chanel

"I fell in love with black; it contained all colors. It wasn’t a negation of color…Black is the most aristocratic color of all. You can be quiet, and it contains the whole thing."
- Louise Nevelson

“Without black, no color has any depth. But if you mix black with everything, suddenly there’s shadow – no, not just shadow, but fullness. You’ve got to be willing to mix black into your palette if you want to create something that’s real.”
— Amy Grant

"There’s something about black. You feel hidden away in it."
- Georgia O’Keeffe

"I love black because it affirms, designs and styles. A woman in a black dress is a pencil stroke."
- Yves Saint Laurent

“Black makes your life so much simpler. Everything matches black, especially black.” ― Norah Ephron

"Black is modest and arrogant at the same time. Black is lazy and easy—but mysterious. But above all, black says this: I don’t bother you—don’t bother me."
- Yohji Yamamoto

“I see the world in black and white, and I don’t like compromising.”
— Greta Thunberg

"If everything isn't black and white, I say, 'Why the hell not?'"
- John Wayne

"I wore black because I liked it. I still do and wearing it still means something to me. It’s still my symbol of rebellion—against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others’ ideas."
- Johnny Cash

“Black and white are the colors of photography. To me, they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.”
— Robert Frank

"Black is such a happy color darling."
- Morticia Addams

"It's too easy to say that orange is happy and black is sad. To me, black is perfect. You can fill it with the emotion you want to express."
- Ann Demeulemeester

"Black and white is abstract; color is not. Looking at a black and white photograph, you are already looking at a strange world."
- Joel Sternfeld


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