Monochrome Magic

I grew up in a small Cape on Long Island, where my father, who was a voracious reader, loved to surround himself with a fortress of books. Most of my dad’s books were kept in his study on the second floor of our home, across a very tiny hall from the room I shared with my brother. The only other room on the second floor was a tiny bathroom, with a toilet, sink, and shower. At some point during my junior high school years, that second-floor bathtub was no longer used for showers. Instead, it had become a repository for books, the overflow from my dad’s study!  Now, you might be asking yourself, “Why is the writer telling me about where his dad kept books by Edmund Wilson, W. H. Auden, and Vladimir Nabokov? I thought this was an article about converting images into black-and-white photos.” Because in this tub, in addition to books by those well-known literary names, he also amassed countless photography books, monographs, and anthologies, which meant I was able to spend hours thumbing through some wonderful black-and-white photography books. I’d giggle looking through my father’s copy of Elliott Erwitt’s Museum Watching and then be brought to tears looking through one of his Life magazine anthologies and see Bill Eppridge’s super contrasty black-and-white photo of the mortally wounded Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968, lying in a pool of his own blood while a busboy tried to comfort him. I’d want to capture muscular-looking vegetables using very small apertures after seeing one of Edward Weston’s still lifes in another book on great photographers. I’d wince (yet still keep looking) at Diane Arbus’ “Tattooed man at a carnival, Md. 1970,” as I thumbed through one of her retrospective books. And then I’d stare long and hard at

the photos in Walker Evans’ American Photographs and Robert Frank’s The Americans, and ask myself what these black-and-white images actually meant. What these books did for me, at first subconsciously, and then overtly, was to show me the incredibly broad range of photographic possibilities available to an artist or photographer using only black and white tones. Today, that range is even wider, more accessible, and easier to create, because we can use digital imaging to tap into that heritage of black-and-white photography. Okay, now on to the more practical part of the article.

Converting Color Photos to Black and White 

There are countless methods for converting color digital photos to black-and-white images and many additional ways to produce black-and-white photos right from the start of your process.  For this article, I’m going to use Photoshop for my conversions, although you can also use Adobe Lightroom, which provides you with many useful ways to convert. To demonstrate how to make these conversions, I’ll use two photos: one shot in outdoors in New York City around Astor Place a few years ago and a more recent photo, shot indoors of my daughter petting her cat (Figure 1).

Although Photoshop offers several quick methods for converting to black and white, they’re not really the best methods to use. For instance, one of the easiest is to desaturate the photo by choosing Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. The results aren’t bad, just a bit dull (Figure 2). You can also remove color by changing the photo’s mode to grayscale. Choose Image > Mode > Grayscale, then click OK in the resulting alert that asks if you really want to throw away your color information. Like the desaturate method, changing the mode to Grayscale doesn’t produce a very interesting image. It’s also destructive, meaning if you save and close the file, you can’t get back your original colors. A better solution, which gives you options for creating a more dynamic black-and-white photo and is also nondestructive, is to add an adjustment layer. First, select Window > Adjustments to open the Adjustments panel, which by default (in the Essentials workspace) is in the middle panel on the right side of the screen, along with Properties and Libraries. In the Adjustments panel, click the Black and White icon to create a grayscale conversion of your image, which admittedly still doesn’t look all that exciting.  You can, however, fine-tune your photo in the Properties panel. Here you can adjust the black-and-white photo using: 

• Presets: Choose from several presets, including Green, Darker, High Contrast Blue, Infrared, Lighter, and more. Once you select the preset, you’ll see the color sliders below change position (Figure 3).

• Color sliders: If you want to tweak one of the presets, you can produce a customized monochrome image by adjusting the sliders, moving them left to darken or right to lighten the gray tones (Figure 4). 

• Tint: You can also apply a color tone to a preset or custom setting by clicking the Tint box, or you can change the color of the tint by clicking the color swatch (and selecting from the Color Picker). 

If you want to start over, click the Reset button below the color sliders to reset the properties to the default setting.

Using Third-Party Plug-ins to Convert to Black and White

Another method of converting color images into black and white is to use a plug-in. For this article, I used DxO’s Nik Collection 3 (which has since been updated to Nik Collection 4), but there are several others worth checking out, including Skylum Luminar^AI?, On1 Effects, BorisFX Optics, and Topaz B&W Effects, to name a few. The Nik Collection plug-in is composed of several modules that give you lots of presets to choose from, but the interface is still intuitive and easy to use. Several of the modules include black-and-white presets, but the Silver Efex module is specifically for converting your images to black-and-white photos, which is why I used that one to convert both my photos (Figure 5).

To apply one of the modules in the Nik Collection, choose Filter from the menu in Photoshop, and then choose Nik Collection > Silver Efex Pro 2, which will bring up that interface. Your photo with one of the presets applied will appear in the center. On the left side of the Silver Efex interface, you can select from one of a few dozen presets, which are categorized into several smaller libraries, such as Classic, Vintage, and Modern.  If you want to customize the effect, go to the right side of the screen, where you can make global and selective adjustments as well as change the filter color and choose a film type. You can even edit the vignette and add a border around the image.  In short, the plug-in offers you lots of ways to tweak the preset (Figure 6). What I particularly like about the Nik Collection is that you can make global adjustments as well as more selective edits with the Control Points feature, which lets you make changes to just a portion of your image. 

Using a Mobile App to Convert to Black and White

Because many of us have mobile devices on hand almost everywhere we go, we can also use mobile apps to change a color image into a monochrome photo. As you might expect, Adobe offers some nice mobile apps. For instance, you can make lots of traditional types of black-and-white images with Adobe’s Lightroom mobile app (available for both iOS and Android devices), which has very intuitive controls that are easy to use (Figure 7). However, there are some very nice third-party mobile apps, too (available for both iOS and Android platforms), which have some impressive features. 

For this article, I used an app called Snapseed (available for both iOS and Android devices), which was originally developed by Nik Software but is now owned by Google. It’s divided into three sections: Looks, Tools, and Export. The Looks section is similar to some of Instagram’s filters and provides you with a quick way to change the saturation or tone of your photo (Figure 8). The Tools section, which is the largest portion of the app, provides you with a variety of ways to manipulate a photo’s texture, lighting, tone, and more (Figure 9). For instance, you can use a blur filter, add text, or add a frame as well. One of my favorite effects is the Grunge tool, which adds a gritty texture to images (Figure 10). When you’re ready, use the Export function to share your photo on social media or directly with others. 

The Many Colors of Black and White

Whether you end up using Photoshop, Lightroom, third-party plug-ins, or mobile apps, I hope this article has demonstrated that you have all sorts of interesting options for converting a color image into black and white, both in terms of the software you use and the creative possibilities you can realize. To paraphrase Henry Ford, you can have any color you like, so long as it’s black (and white).

A Black-and-White Bonanza

Check out these articles for more black-and-white photo tips and techniques. Photography How-to: Learning to See in Black and White Lightroom in Black and White Turning an Image to Pure Black and White in Photoshop Free Scripts to Convert Color Images to Grayscale How to Perceive Brightness More Accurately