Practical Photoshop March 2023

» Over the following pages, you’ll find lots of useful information on how to transform your color images into beautiful black-and-white photos. But before we get stuck into ‘how’, it’s worth taking a moment to consider ‘why’. So ask yourself: what is the reason for removing color? It could be that the lack of color draws attention to other things like patterns and textures; or that a mono treatment gives the scene a calmness that would be difficult to convey in color; or that stripping out color enhances an expression or the play of light across the scene. Here are a few things that black-and-white tends to do better than color… PATTERNS Recurring patterns can look especially bold when given the black-and-white treatment EXPRESSIONS Removing the color in portraits can emphasize the expression of…

» Black-and-white conversions are best carried out on raw photos, as raws retain more color information than JPEGs. But why is this important when we’re getting rid of the color? We make use of the color information during the raw conversion, in order to fine-tune the luminosity of different color ranges. This is best done using the B&W color range sliders in the Black and White Panel of Camera Raw or Lightroom. The extra color information is also invaluable if we want to pull detail out of deep shadows or bright highlights, and it can also help to prevent banding occurring in tonal gradients when we boost the contrast. 01 IN CAMERA RAW Navigate to the image in Bridge, right-click and select Open in Camera Raw. Click the B&W button in the top-right, then…

» While the black-and-white tools we’ve talked about give you ultimate control, you don’t necessarily want to be shifting half a dozen sliders every time you want to try out a monochrome treatment. This is where Profiles can be invaluable. Available in Camera Raw and Lightroom (as well as via the Camera Raw filter in Photoshop), Profiles let you quickly apply different looks to your images with a single click. There are a range of default black-and-white Profiles to experiment with – but we’ve supplied 16 more effects for you to try out. There are eight black-and-white and eight tinting effects. All of the Profiles work on raws, but some may not work on JPEGs. To load them in, simply go to the Basic Panel in Camera Raw, click the grid…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3XMdmAG » One of the best things about black-and-white is how much headroom you have to selectively lighten or darken areas of the image. There are lots of ways to do so (check out our dodging and burning masterclass in this issue), but one of our favorites is with Curves. Thanks to a recent update, we can now use Curves in combination with masks in Camera Raw and Lightroom. This allows us to quickly isolate part of an image with a mask, then fine-tune the brightness or contrast of the area with Curves. Open an image into Camera Raw. After converting to mono, press K for the Brush Tool and paint over where you’d like to adjust. Next, go to the Curves settings on the right. Drag down to darken the…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/3XIg8Hq 01 CONVERT TO MONO Open the image in Photoshop, then go to the Layers Panel. Click the Create Adjustment Layer icon and choose Black and White, then fine-tune the sliders to control the look of the black-and-white image. Next open the brushed_border image supplied, then grab the Move Tool. 02 POSITION THE BORDER Drag the border up to the tab of the other image, then down and in to copy the image over. Use the Move Tool to position the border over the other image (if you need to resize, press Cmd/Ctrl+T for transform or go to Edit > Free Transform), then drag the bounding box to change the size. 03 BLEND THE BORDER Click the Blending Mode dropdown in the Layers Panel and choose Screen from the pop-up menu. This blends the…

» In the early days of Photoshop, the spot color look was horribly overused. But on the right kind of image, selective color saturation can create eye-catching results. This is easily done in Camera Raw or Lightroom… 01 REMOVE COLORS Head to the Color Mixer Panel and click the Saturation tab. Grab the target tool from the settings, then drag over colors in the image to selectively lighten or darken them. Here we can darken the oranges and yellows while intensifying the reds. If you like, click on the Hue Panel, then use the target tool to shift the colors of the area. If you need to tidy up any unwanted patches of color, press K for the Brush Tool, paint over the area then drag down on the Saturation slider to…