How to Make Striking Grayscale Images in Photoshop

These are five variations of the same photograph in black and white.

Some people won’t watch black-and-white movies or look at black-and-white photos because they consider them old. However, making striking grayscale photos is an art, and looking at them takes the same eye it does to look at a Van Gogh painting or an Ansel Adams photograph of Yosemite. Even with digital cameras, making brilliant, engrossing grayscale photos is possible.

Things You'll Need

• Digital or film camera
• Memory card or film
• Apple Macintosh computer
• Adobe Photoshop CS (or CS2, CS3)

Instructions

1. 

   Shoot digital in the highest quality format available on your camera in color. Don’t use any internal effects available on these cameras. You’ll change everything in Photoshop where you have more control. There still are black-and-white films available. Unless you can process them yourself, use a black-and-white film that will process in color chemistry because any local film processor can develop it for you.

2. 

   Digitize the film or upload the digital images. Save these original files, and work on copies to avoid destroying what you shot.

3. 

   Open an image in color. Make appropriate adjustments to levels. For more photos, Auto Levels is fine, but for better control, use Levels. First select the darkest area with the dark eyedropper, then the lightest. If the photo looks right, slide the Midlevels to the left a bit to lighten any dark foreground area. When you like the photo, save it as "Copy 1." Then save it again as "Copy 2." This way, while you’re experimenting, you won’t lose the best levels. Make sure it is in RGB format under Mode.

4. 

   Go to "Image" > "Adjustments" > "Desaturate." This will make a basic grayscale image of your photo without losing the latitude granted by RGB. Grayscale mode only has 256 levels of gray. RGB desturated gives you millions of shades of gray to work with.

5. 

   Go to "Image" > "Adjustments" > "Equalize." For many photos, this will give a stark, artisitic look to grayscale photos. The major exception is a lot of white or light areas, such as the sky. With a large sky and a sharp contrast between sky and ground, use the Magic Wand Tool to select the sky. Make sure it selects all of it. If it doesn’t, use the Shift key while clicking on unselected areas. When all the light areas are selected, go to "Equalize." A dialog box will appear asking whether to equalize the area selected or the whole photo based on that area. Equalize just that area. Then go to "Select" > "Inverse." This will reverse the selected area so you can work on the part of the photo not yet equalized.

6. 

   Go to "Image" > "Adjustments" > "Curves." Select a point in the middle of the line, and drag it up and slightly to the left slightly. This lightens the overall photo slightly. Then select a point on the line on the upper right, and drag upward. This gives more dramatic whites. Select a point on the lower left, and drag down and to the right. This gives richer blacks.

7. 

   Use the Filter Gallery to tweak the image more. A Diffuse Glow will enhance some images well, but you can use others such as Charcoal, Graphic Pen, Cutout, Sumi-e, Dark Strokes and Photocopy. Using some of these filters, you can even make it look like a painting. Don’t be afraid to use sepia tone. Photoshop also has some preset effects such as Fluorescent Chalk and Soft Posterize in the Actions pop-up menu that can give stunning effects.

Tips & Warnings

• Photoshop CS3 has a better system for controlling grayscale photos than its predecessors, so if you have the newest version, try that.

• This process easily works with earlier versions of Photoshop.

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish