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Black and White in Photoshop Tutorials

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Always shoot in color! You can always remove it but never add it. With this method you can leave your camera's black and white setting or auto black and white apps off and use this simple tutorial to create versitile and adjustible black and white photos from your color image.


Enlarge this photo

Make a Black and White Photo

8 easy steps!

1. Open your photo in Photoshop.

2. From the top menu, select Image > Mode > Lab Color

3. At the top of the layers window, click the 'Channels' tab.

4. Select the "Lightness" layer, then go back up to the menu and click Image > Mode > Greyscale.

5. Discard other channels = OK. You now have a black and white image that is too bright...keep reading...

6. Go back to the 'Layers' tab from the Channels tab in the layer window and press Ctrl+J (Cmd+J on Mac) to duplicate the layer.

7. In the layer window again, make sure the top layer is selected, and change the 'blending mode' from normal to miltiply.

8. Adjust the Opacity slider to your liking!

STILL not dark enough?

9. If opacity is at 100% and it's still not dark enough for you, press Ctrl+J to duplicate another layer. Adjust the opacity of the new layer.

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Black and white photos look the best with good lighting. You can really emphasize natural lighting here, and textures such as wood grain or rough stone.

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Reader Feedback

Post a link to your newly created black and white photo here! If it's on Flickr i can add it to the photostream of examples above.

  • sprock Mar 26, 2010 @ 8:19 am | delete
    Great tutorials thanks for sharing
  • PixOLated May 8, 2007 @ 11:48 pm | delete
    I've used the LAB mode to Greyscale before, but never added the multiply - very cool. Thanks.
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