Mbdisign.nl Forums

Welcome to this second tutorial, in which you'll be shown something about making black and white images in Photoshop. I can already hear you thinking "I'm just going to press the Desaturate button and be done with it". Well, you could do that, but it doesn't give you the best results. In this tutorial I will show you various methods of making a Black and White image, and I will also compare the results.
First of all, open the image you would like to use. I chose this one, a picture of my cat:



The first method is pretty straight-forwards: simply press Shift+Ctrl+U or go to Image ->Adjustments -> Desaturate. This will be the result:



The second method is very easy as well. Simply go to Image -> Adjustments -> Chanel Mixer. Make sure that "Monochrome" is checked and click on "Ok" to get a result similar to this:



For the third method you need to go to Image -> Adjustments -> Gradient Map, and choose a gradient which goes from black to white. The result will be similar to this:



Now here is a small comparison between the three methods, in the order in which I have shown them:



Then I've adjusted the Levels, and this is a comparisson between the results. In a later tutorial I will show you how to adjust the levels:



As you can see the one in the middle, made with the second method, has got quite a bit of noise, and we don't want that. The first one, made by using the Desaturate-option, is nice, but the picture looks a bit dull. The last one, made with the Gradient Map, looks the best out of the three. There is no noise, and the contrast is good; the picture doesn't look dull.

So for this picture the best way to make it black and white is by using a Gradient Map. With some pictures one of the other methods might look better though, so if you're not satisfied with the result you got by using method number three, try method number one or two.

If you have any questions about this tutorial, simply send me a PM or post a message on the forum.


[Follow-up Tutorials]

Returning some color to your black-and-white image
http://www.mbdisign.nl/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9233#9233