dekeBytes: Black and White Options in Photoshop CS3

In a world that is saturated with color, there is something about the elegant simplicity of black-and-white imagery that gets right to the heart of things. The removal of color allows our eyes and minds to focus on subtleties of shadow and shape in a way that's different from our everyday visual experience. Creating a beautiful black-and-white image can be very satisfying and relatively easy to do. With Photoshop CS3, you can rob your pixels of color in Photoshop CS3 in many ways, from the classic Channel Mixer to the new Black & White command and Camera Raw's Convert to Grayscale check box. Happily, each one of these functions put you in charge of the color-to-grayscale conversion process.

I'll start with this image, from iStockPhoto photographer Joseph Jean Rolland Dube, and give you a glimpse the effects from three different options that Photoshop now provides:

Image by Joseph Jean Rolland Dube courtesy of iStockPhoto

Prior to Photoshop CS3, the best way to convert a color image to black and white was the Channel Mixer. Note that these values I used here add up to 100 percent, thus ensuring a consistency in brightness from color to grayscale. Happily, CS3 now tracks your total as you work so you don't have to do the math on your own.

Photoshop CS3 introduces the new command Black & White command that gives you more control and flexibility. Instead of mixing channels, Black & White weights colors, making for a more subjective experience. It also means you're not bound to make the values add up to 100 percent or any other total. Just raise a value to brighten a primary or lower the value to darken it.

Camera Raw 4 permits you to convert an image to black and white nondestructively, whether the image begins life as a RAW file or a JPEG, by using the Grayscale Mix feature of the HSL/Grayscale panel. Now we have dedicated controls that slightly exceed the capabilities of the Black & White command.

Note that many cameras give you the option of capturing a grayscale photograph from the get-go, but where raw images are concerned, it's a fake. The color information is there, it's merely turned off by a line of metadata, often one that Camera Raw doesn't recognize and therefore ignores. But that's okay, because all that color gives you a degree of post-processing control that didn't exist in the days of traditional black-and-white photography. My recommendation: Don't worry about the black-and-white setting behind the camera; save that decision for when you're in front of your computer.

For a whole book-load of hands-on Deke tutorials complete with more accompanying video goodness, look for his new book Adobe Photoshop CS3 One-on-One from O'Reilly. You can also check out more of Deke's videos at online training center lynda.com.