Converting colour to black and white

Photo of baskets I took in 2016 converted from colour to black and whites.

Gone are the days of using coloured filters and panchromatic paper in a darkroom to take a colour negative and print it in black and white.  While it is true that you can use standard b&w paper to create a print, the medium's limited sensitivity to orange/red/yellow safelights means that you will not get a true grayscale image.  The filters allow you to change which hues come out darker or lighter than would otherwise be possible.

Now we can simply convert a coloured image to grayscale (Image > Mode > Grayscale in Photoshop) to get a single-channel instead of the standard 3 (RBG).  The problem is that you can't control the way the hues turn to gray.  A better plan is to alter the colour balance before converting to grayscale.  This can be done manually through the Color Balance menu or automatically through the Black and White menu, found under Image > Adjustments in Photoshop.  This brings up the menu item seen in the center of the above image and produces a real-time view of how colour adjustments will affect the photo.

If you take a moment to examine the three converted photos, you will notice that the various shades have come out differently.  You can play with the sliders and get the desired results.  I often will change them once and go over them a second time to finesse the final image.  I do this for each and every photo I use in my course instruction books where they are to be printed in black and white.  The results are always better than what simply discarding colour information (averaging the channels) will do.

While it is true that I don't print many of my images in true black and white, the above method provides good results.  If you have a laser printer, you can play with the results yourself and see which variation you like.  You don't need Photoshop to do this.  There are other ways to make the change, depending on the editor you use.  Give it a shot, you will see what I mean.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

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