A tutorial for quick, striking B&W digital photos

When I first pursued photography, it was on the 35mm film medium.  We shot black & white, typically ISO 400 in my Photography I class.  Good times were had, and the output was pleasing (even though it was a real PITA developing everything by hand myself in the darkroom - poor eyesight is NOT conducive to such activities).  Eventually, I ventured into the world of digital, which was certainly a more comfortable medium for me given my background in photo manipulation and digital art that preceded it.  Still, there was one area that I was somewhat lost on.. Producing strong black and white images.

I've been using this method for a while now, and thought that it would be prudent to share.  Note that a lot of this is very determinate on the source image, and also requires a good eye while processing and some decent experience.  There are 2 variable points here that will require you to make your own judgements.  Also, this tutorial is designed to focus on still casually viewable images, but sometimes the results can be funky (in a good way), depending on choices you make at the start of the tutorial.  That being said, lets get started.

Grab the source image from my free stock collection over at sxc.hu.

First, we'll need to make it grayscale.  We aren't going to just convert the base image, though; we're actually going to pick the red, green, or blue channel, and convert just it to grayscale.  So, navigate over to the channels tab (should be with the layers tab), and click on the "Red" channel.

Note that the channel tab is where you can actually create something more unique, should you choose a different channel.  Feel free to experiment.  Typically, with fair skinned human subjects, the red channel will be ideal.

Anyway, after selecting the appropriate channel, you'll need to convert it to grayscale and discard the layers.  Just go to Image -> Mode -> Grayscale, and if it burps something about discarding the other channels, just say yes.

In some cases, we can just stop here and be done with it, but we're going to do a little more work with this one.  These steps will be especially important for producing prints intended to be sold as art.

First, we'll need to do some level adjustment.  Go to Image -> Adjust -> Levels, and tweak the sliders right below the Histogram.  Depending on the original colors in the image, you may only need to adjust the middle slider, like I have here:

Once again, this will require some play depending on your desired results.  In our case, we're only working to reduce a little bit of the noise and create some subtle contrast between the subject and background before this next step, which is going to be useful for images such as this one.

Our lovely lady here is a little soft around the face; if we were doing 1980s glam photography at Walmart, that would be fine, and we'd probably soften it a little more.  Since we're trying to be up-to-date professionals and creative types, we're going to try to reduce that a bit.

Go to Filter -> Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask.  For this image, see below for a reference:

Here's another situation that'll require attention depending on the source image.  The big factors will be the existing detail in the source image (and channel), and the resolution.  You'll have to use your own judgement on this one.

Basically, we're done.  I decided to take it a bit further, though, and added a subtle amount of vignetting.  That's easily accomplished by utilizing the elliptical selection tool, and selecting an area in the photo as seen here:

Create a new layer for the vignetting, and go to Select -> Inverse, Select -> Feather, enter "100" for this image (depending on resolution), and fill the area with black.  For this image, I set the blending mode for the layer to "Soft Light", but if you want something stronger, you can use Overlay or Multiply.

That brings us to the result (click for a full view).

So, that's your quick and easy guide to nice black & white images.  Just remember, subtlety is still your friend; don't forget to use restraint, and always make sure that the source image is as good as you can get it.  This isn't a crutch to compensate for bad photography, but another method of expression.  Even the photo in this tutorial is less than ideal; we would be better off with more lighting in the original (I had to increase the exposure through RAW processing).