Photoshop trick for high-contrast B&W images
I was going to share this trick with a friend of mine over the weekend, but stuff came up and it ended up not happening. So instead of waiting until the next time I see him, I figured I would write up a quick little tutorial and stick it here on my blog.
I always shoot in raw format when taking photos, but I convert many of those images to B&W afterwards. This is a trick I picked up a while ago that helps to boost the contrast of the image. I’ve used this trick on some of my favorite B&W images like these:
This tutorial will show the steps in Photoshop CS4 on a Mac, but it will work with just about any version of Photoshop. As a matter of fact, all of the images linked above were actually done in Photoshop Elements long before I had CS4 on my system.
This is the image I’ll be using for the tutorial:
Except for being resized, this is an untouched image straight from the camera. It was taken in Sleepy Hollow, NY and I uploaded an edited version to Flickr more than 6 months ago.
Step 1 - Convert to B&W
There are plenty of good tutorials out there on how best to convert an image to B&W (such as this one), so I won’t get into that here. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will simply use the Desaturate command in Photoshop. Click “Image”, then “Adjustments” and then “Desaturate”.
Afterwards, the image will look like this:
Step 2 - Duplicate the layer
In your layers palette, right-click on the background layer and choose “Duplicate Layer…” and then click the Ok button.
This will create a second layer that is identical to the original image.
Step 3 - Change Blending Mode and Opacity
Make sure you have the new layer (which should also be on top of the original layer) selected. Click the Blending Mode drop-down in the Layers Palette and choose “Multiply”.
You can learn more about the Multiply blending mode here, but the short story is that Multiply will use a mathmatical equation to darken regions of the image based on the layers beneath the one selected.
The change in blending mode will drastically darken the image… moreso than is pleasing to the eye, probably. This is where the Opacity slider comes in to play. In the layers palette, just to the right of the blending modes, you should see another drop-down box labeled “Opacity”, which is currently set to 100%. Click the drop-down arrow to reveal a slider.
Move the Opacity slider to the left to reduce how much of that layer is visible. The results will be visible as you adjust the slider, so just move it until you get the look you want. In my case, I adjusted the opacity down to 31%.
And that’s all there is to it! Take a look at the before and after:
Before (only desaturated):
After:
The difference is subtle, but noticeable. This technique adds a bit of contrasty punch to the image that can take something from dull greys to inky blacks in a few easy steps.
2 years ago