Black and White Photos

isaacsmom

isaacsmom

New member
I have been seeing lots of awesome black and white photos in some of the layouts in the gallery. Tell me, how do you do it? I try to make mine into black and white (in PSE5) because I love that look but can never seem to get it to look just right. The contrast just doesn't seem right. So I am wondering if I just don't know how to turn my photos black and white or maybe I just take bad photos to begin with. Are you tweaking the photos yourselves or do you have some sort of program that does it for you? Just curious.
 
I don't use the PSE B&W conversion tool... I don't like it. I either use Virtual Photographer (a plug-in that has some really useful filters) or I duplicate the photo and play with blend modes and then once the lighting is right, I add a black layer on top and set it to HUE... that will turn it black and white.
 
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I use PSP and have a couple of scripts that I run on mine...I usually use Michelle Pearsons b/w conversion first and then run her color wash script AFTER I've turned it black and white lol...it gives me the look I like. Then I usually run a "fix underexposure" script I have that blows it out the way I want it...like in this layout... I know Michelle used to sell at Scrapbook bytes and she had the same actions for PSE if I remember correctly.

 
Lots of people use Adobe Lightroom, and it makes ordinary photos amazing. Not me. I rarely get lucky to have amazing photos, but I'm okay with that. ; )

I use Virtual Photographer, too, and I like it bunches.
 
Can you add a gradient map in PSE5? I don't remember.

This one way I do it.

Duplicate your layer. Turn the layer on top into a gradient map (map- not fill). Change the gradient to go from black to white.

Add a hue and sat layer. In the settings, hit colorize and change the hue to somewhere around 30 and saturation around 10. I made mine have a brownish tint to it.

Then mess with contrast if needed.

Here are examples:

SOOC:
example1.jpg



B&W gradient:
example2copy.jpg


Opps! Just realized I forgot to sharpen. Imagine that they are nice and crisp! LOL!
 
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You can also desaturate then play with the levels

I do love PW's b/w action..and I splurged on TRA2 a few weeks back and there's some great b/w conversions in there too
 
good thread! I am going to have to try out what Megan suggested. I normally do the b/w gradient but mostly my photos don't turn out in b/w they way I'd like them to. Probably b/c my photos aren't that great to begin with.
 
I learned this trick LONG time ago and still come back to it most of the time.

Change your mode to Grayscale. Do auto contrast. Change back to color mode. Duplicate layer and change to screen. Adjust opacity to your liking. Duplicate layer again and use soft light. Adjust opacity. Flatten.
 
Melissa...thank you so much! I love your technique! I've been playing around with it and it looks great! I also tried using "Hard Light" instead of "Soft Light" and it gives it a different look that I like.

Cindy, I also want to know how Sarah gets her BW conversions. Those are awesome!
 
I've also been playing with blend modes more since doing one of the recent shutterbug shakedown challenges...you can get all different kinds of effects which I never knew :)
 
I have an action, B's Vanilla B&W II that i found at ATNCentral. Scroll down to where it says Black and White Conversion and its the fourth one down. i also have the one above it, the split tone one. i don't use it much, but its different.
 
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