Photoshop CS3 Undressed! Black and White adjustments
This week, I’m going to reveal a few secrets about the Black & White adjustment that can help you save time, effort and energy and possibly create a black & white masterpiece, or two!
To launch the adjustment, either choose Image » Adjustments » Black & White, or click on the “Create new fill or adjustment” icon in the Layers palette and then choose Black & White.
The dialog opens and applies a default black and white adjustment to your image. It’s a good starting point but you will more than likely want to apply custom settings in order to create a more pleasing black & white image.
Photoshop Black & White adjustment dialog showing default setting
Each slider is accompanied by a corresponding color chip. Not a lot to add other than the sliders darken and lighten the corresponding color in your image. The values range between -200 and +300, which is a pretty good range.
Rather than move the sliders, you can click on a color in the image and then “scrub” left and right. Scrubbing left darkens a color, scrubbing right lightens it. One problem with scrubbing is you cannot see the color under the sampler. You can deselect/select the Preview option but it’s quicker to toggle the preview by pressing P. However, this tip only works the first time you apply an adjustment. If you open the dialog again to tweak the settings, the preview toggles between current and previous settings.
When you scrub the image, if you hold down Shift, the values change by 10% increments, instead of single figures (10, 20, 30%, etc). This can help when experimenting but more than likely you will want to increase/decrease values in single figures.
You can reset all of the sliders to default by holding down Alt/Opt and then clicking the Cancel button when it turns to the Reset button. However, what if you want to reset a single slider? Hold down Alt/Opt and then click the color chip.
You can, of course, save your current settings as a custom preset by clicking the icon next to the pop-up menu at the top of the dialog and choosing Save Preset from the pop-up menu.
Once you are pleased with your black & white image, you can tint it by selecting the Tint option and then using the sliders and the color box to select a color. There aren’t any secrets to using the settings, other than good judgment!
:: Young girl playing by the seaside original :: MPX Stock Images
:: Young girl playing by the seaside tinted :: MPX Stock Images
That’s all for now, folks!
Copyright © 2008, Shangara Singh.
Comment
, Leave a Reply