How to Professionally Make an Image Black and White in Photoshop

In this tutorial, you will learn how to professionally make an image black and white in Photoshop. There are many ways to make an image black and white in photoshop, the quickest and simplest solution is using Photoshop’s standard black and white preset. Presets are great for most needs but ultimately are restricting. You can find a tutorial on how to quickly turn an image black and white here.

The second way which is by far the more superior professional solution; is to use multiple adjustment layers and layer masks to fine-tune the end result for that high-end, gallery-quality look.

Throughout this tutorial, we will briefly cover topics on:

• Adjustment layers

• Blend Modes

• Layer Masks

which will all further your knowledge in Photoshop as well as learn how to professionally make an image black and white in Photoshop

Open image in Photoshop

Start by opening the image you wish to edit into Photoshop.

Adjustment Layers

Create a hue/saturation adjustment layer by clicking on the adjustment layer icon (half black half white circle) at the bottom right corner of your Photoshop window and selecting Hue/saturation.

Repeat this step so that you are left with two Hue/Saturation adjustment layers.

Desaturate

As the most recently created adjustment layer ‘Hue/Saturation 2’ will be at the top and selected, so slide the Saturation all the way to the left till it reaches the value of -180.

I know what you’re thinking! You’re done! Technically you have a black and white image, however, all you’ve done at this stage is desaturating the image which means you have taken all the color out of it. Honestly, if you’re happy with the result then, by all means, be done, however, this is just the beginning and it’s highly recommended to stay till the end of this tutorial as by further fine-tuning the edits we will be able to take the effect to the next level.

See for yourself above, this comparison image, on the left shows the photo at this stage with the one edit and the right shows how the image will look at the end of this tutorial with further fine-tuning.

Luminosity

Click on the bottom first adjustment layer labeled ‘Hue/Saturation 1’ and change the Blend mode to Luminosity, by clicking on the blend mode drop-down menu and selecting Luminosity at the very bottom.

Luminosity, as the name suggests, affects the brightness of your image, so by setting the blend mode to this, the edits on this adjustment layer will only affect the shadows which are the dark bits in your photograph and the highlights which are the bright bits.

Start sliding the Hue on the bottom adjustment layer (Hue/Saturation 1) in both directions whilst concentrating on your foreground until you reach the desired result you’re happy with. In our image, we are trying to make the body of water much darker with contrasting shine, so that it will add drama to our photograph.

Sometimes the luminosity edit that looks best for one part of an image may not look great in another part of the image. As almost every photograph is broken down into two sections, the foreground, and the background. For this reason, to be able to fine-tune our edits we will be editing both sections separately.

When sliding the luminosity hue, concentrate only on the foreground of your photograph.

Foreground Clean Up

Now you may be lucky and by editing your foreground, you ended up with the perfect background result, if that’s the case then you can skip to the end where we add some amazing detail in. But this is rare so assuming that everything isn’t perfect just ignore the background for now.

Group

Select both adjustment layers by holding down Command/Ctrl on a Mac/PC and clicking on both layers.

Once they have been both selected, click on the group icon to group both layers together. The group icon (folder looking icon) can be found at the bottom right corner in Photoshop) Rename the group by double-clicking on the name and call it Foreground.

Layer Mask

Next whilst the group is still selected, click on the layer mask icon (rectangle with a circle in the middle) which can be found at the bottom right corner in Photoshop. This will create a layer mask on everything that is in the group.

Grab your paintbrush tool by clicking the brush icon to the left of your screen or using the shortcut; B. Once your brush has been selected, right-click on your image and reduce the hardness down to 0% and choose an appropriately large-sized brush.

Finally set your foreground color to black. You can do this manually by selecting black in the color panel or by pressing the shortcut; D, which resets your foreground and background colors to black and white and then use the shortcut; X to switch the two around.

Begin slowly to start brushing the background areas you want to remove the edits from. (Think of this as an eraser where you are slowly scrubbing away what you don’t want). Don’t worry if you remove too much, if this happens, just change the foreground color to white by pressing the shortcuts: D to reset the colors and then: X to switch white to the foreground color. Just brush the edits back, it’s as simple as that, switch between black to remove and white to add.

Background Edits

Your foreground will now be a stunning black and white photograph and the background will now have it’s color back. It’s finally time to change that.

Repeat

We’re going to repeat exactly what we just did to the foreground but now just focusing on the background.

Create two Hue/Saturation adjustment layers, change the blend mode to luminosity, do your adjustments, group them together, rename the group, and finally create a layer mask and brush away the foreground this time.

It’s all in the Detail

Black and white photographs are known for being dramatic, powerful, and bold. Now we have successfully created a beautiful black and white photograph, however, we can take this one step further by creating more contrast in a chosen element of your photo. In our case, we will focus on creating more drama by playing with the contrast of different elements in the photograph.

Curves

This can be achieved simply by creating a new Curves adjustment layer. First click on the bottom group which affects the foreground of the image. Click on the adjustment layer icon and select curves.

With the curves layer open, Click on the ‘Drag in image’ icon which looks like a finger in-between two arrows.

Now click on an element in your photograph that you wish to bring out more. In our case we will click and hold on the body of water and drag down. What this will do is use where we clicked as a reference point and darken all the similar elements in the photo (the rest of the water in our image). If we were to drag up it would lighten the lake.

Repeat this stage on the background group. The curves edits will only affect either the foreground or the background as they belong to the retrospective groups which have active layer masks.

You now have a professional Gallery quality Black and White Image

Congratulations you’ve just learned how to professionally make an image black and white in Photoshop. Kudos!

Now that your image is black and white; you may be interested in learning how to make your image have a Sepia effect in one simple step. (Half the work is in making the image black and white). You can find the Sepia tutorial here. 

Since you’re here…

… we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading and supporting Savvy little Pixel, than ever before. Unlike many major websites, we have no funding, no staff but a small team that has full-time jobs that volunteer their free time, creating content with love and passion. We need your support to keep delivering quality content. Every reader contribution, big or small, is so valuable. Support Savvy little Pixel from as little as £1. Thank you.