Photoshop Friday! {Issue #8}

Hello, and welcome to Photoshop Friday!

Today’s PS Friday is useful, functional, foolproof, and easy.

How many things in life can you say THAT about, huh?

Adventures in Black and White (and sepia, too)

We are going to have an adventure in Black and White, as well as in Sepia. And basically this means you’ll learn a great method for GREAT black and white conversion, and for changing that black and white to a sepia, and ALL without touching our original photo. The secret? Adjustment layers.

I should put a disclaimer here that there are a LOT of ways to get a great high-contrast black and white. Some people use curves. Some use levels, some use layer blending modes, some use the channel mixer, and they are all fantastic. Here is one more tool for your toolbelt. I think it creates a very smooth conversion without hotspots, and gives a good deal of control, too.

Let’s get started.

First, I’ll choose a photo that I think would look great in black and white.

Here’s one of my sister at her wedding a few weeks ago. I just love the mill wheel, and her stepping delicately over the stones to get in photo position. She’s beautiful. And this picture really needs to be black and white. And maybe we’ll get crazy and do a sepia too. :)


This photo is pretty dark, so let’s fix that in our black-and-white conversion as well.

1. Open your photo.
2. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map
If you’re in Elements, your whole image might turn white at this point. Don’t panic.
3. Click in the gradient itself to edit. (That’s the big white or gradient bar inside the popup, like this).
The gradient dialog appears.Choose the black-to-white gradient, which is third from the left on the top row. Like this:


Your image turns black and white. (Yay!)But we still have a problem. The image, because it started out dark, is very flat and washed out. Let’s fix it by boosting the white.
4. Drag the bottom right slider (the white one) over to the left. You can see the white in your image brightening, bringing out detail and adding contrast. Slide this slider until you get a result you’re happy with. It’ll differ for every image, but it might look something like this:



5. (If your image started out too bright or you’d like to add some more dark hues, slide the black slider (bottom left) toward the right until you get enough shadow.
6. Click OK in the gradient editor.
7. Click OK in the gradient map dialog.

Here is what my image looked like after applying the gradient map adjustment layer.


The coolest part about this conversion, is that if you aren’t happy, rather than throwing your image away and starting over, you can simply double-click on the gradient map thumbnail in the layers palette to edit the gradient. This is called non-destructive editing, and yay! It saves time and headaches.

(p.s. if you want to see some really funky colors, try applying a few of the other gradients in the editor, or making some of your own. Just for kicks, of course. :))

Okay, on to the next piece. I think Julie’s photo could use the softness of a sepia tone. So we’re going to add that next.

Adding a Sepia Tone

If you are working in Photoshop 7, CS, or CS2, you can change your image mode to Grayscale and then to Duotone and pick from a wide array of pre-made duotones and tritones. It’s a great way to kill an hour or two, and they have some awesome combinations.

This, on the other hand, is the quick-and-easy way to add a sepia tone in any version of Photoshop.

1. Open the photo you’d like to add the sepia to. (You don’t have to convert it to black and white first, but I recommend following the gradient map adjustment layer above to get really nice contrast in the tones.)
If you are working in the photo you just converted, make sure you have the top layer selected in your layers palette before moving on, so you can ensure that the next layer you create goes on top of the stack.

2. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation
3. Click the Colorize checkbox in the popup.
4. Set the top value to 25, the middle value to 15, and leave the bottom value where it is. You can adjust the middle value to anywhere between 4-17 and get a very nice sepia tone.

And that’s it!
Here is my end result, side-by-side with the original.

Comments

[mona_miee]

yea!! thank you so much for this great tutorial!!! Now, I'm off to apply what I just learned. :~)

[anna]

you soooo rock!