A Primer in Photoshop

Do you sell black-and-white images? Do you spend more than a couple of hours per week manipulating, managing or converting color images to black and white? Is black-and-white photography an important aspect to your business strategy? Do the endless number of techniques and tools for converting your color images to black and white perplex you? If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, this article was written for you.

Today photographers and Photoshop users are faced with an endless array of choices for creating black-and-white images. This profound reality rings true every month as more books, magazine articles and seminars dedicated to the craft show up on Web sites and booksellers’ shelves. From designer action sets, plug-ins and, more recently, Adobe or ACR presets, the world of black and white can be more exciting and profitable than ever.

Let’s talk about first things first. For those photographers who are old hands in the darkroom or have been using Photoshop for any significant amount of time, the idea of using any kind of plug-in or alternative interface(s) will seem foreign. Adobe channel mixer, adjustment layers, layer masks and blending modes are the name of the game. Your typical conversion may look something like this:

1.) From the Channels window, click on the split channels arrow. (This will provide separate blue, green and red channels.)

2.) Select the desirable areas of the image from the green and red channels, masking what’s underneath (often the blue channel is disregarded). Sometimes you might want to mask pale areas from the red channel so the more textured green channel will blend into the layer you are working on using whatever opacity you want for optimal results.

3). Create new layers to make final tonal adjustments, selective softness or sharpening, vignettes, noise and any other final touches you’d like.

4). Flatten the file, convert to RGB and save.

That is a time-consuming and subjective process that produces high-quality results. However, wedding and event photographers who capture thousands of images during a shoot, this can be a nightmare. To reduce labor hours and make converting and selling black-and-white images more profitable, every professional should semi-automate routine tasks using actions, droplets or plug-ins, which makes getting base images to work a lot less painful.

After tagging your images in Adobe Bridge, Adobe Lightroom or sorting each into specific folders based on desired effects such as exposure, tint/tone and such, the images may be presented as proofs to the client or further image prep, and creative actions can be taken to enhance your image. You may find that the following tools can help you to refine your vision in black and white, improve your efficiency and make working with the medium more profitable.

Photoshop actions are arguably the most popular and useful tool to the professional photographer who frequently processes thousands of images per shoot. Any basic book on Photoshop can show you how to create your own. You can buy and run the actions from some of today’s top photographers like Jeff Ascough and Kevin Kubota (among others), or you can download free ones from the Internet. One free action, although not to be confused with inferior quality, is based on celebrity photographer Greg Gorman’s approach to black-and-white conversion.

Gorman’s action produces exceptional results, and the best part is that it leaves the working layers so you can modify the contrast and tone used in the conversion for a custom effect. I personally prefer a grittier look (noise or grain), so if you are like me and are looking for actions with artistic flair that modern brides and customers will love, then Kubota Actions might be the perfect solution.

Unlike the free Gorman/Holbert action, Kubota actions come in Volumes 1, 2 and 3 and will set you back about $100 each. Within the volumes you will get everything from the practical (grain, exposure, resize/upsize, keyline borders, edge burner, etc.) to the sublime (Tea Stained, KiYoko Punch, Bronzed God and Velveteen) and everything in between. The only complaint I have with Kubota actions is that there are so many to choose from, that unless you study the effects from each volume carefully it’s a real challenge hunting for the results you want. This is an issue I hope that onOne Software will figure out and make easier for photographers with their PhotoTools Pro.

Kubota actions have styles for color and black-and-white photos, so if you are a black-and-white aficionado with a more classic aesthetic, look no further than Ascough Actions. Ascough Actions are geared more for those trying to achieve a classic enhancement rather than a major special effect. Not all of the actions are optimized for bulk operations, however. Several of the actions allow user-selectable inputs such as selecting an area mask or painting the intensity of enhancements into a layer, so be sure when choosing an action for your soft proofs that you choose one that will not stop the operation and prompt you for input for each image.

Some other tools are even better for achieving a traditional black-and-white look than the previously mentioned approaches. Software developers have incorporated formulas into programs (or plug-in modules for Photoshop) that produce some of the most realistic film-like effects that you have ever seen. The user interface that the products offer makes getting convincing results extremely easy for beginners and advanced users alike. Alien Skin, Imagenomic, The Plugin Site and DxO are a few of the main vendors producing film emulation plug-ins for Photoshop. With just about every imaginable film, developer, paper and ink combination available, and the ability to control the grain in the shadow, midtones and highlights… and even the grain size itself, there isn’t a look you can’t recreate in Photoshop using these tools.

The only real downside to any of these plug-ins is the time it takes to invoke the module with custom values from an action set or a droplet, and in many cases will not be possible because it requires that you press the “Ok” button to accept the selections, which the action cannot do for you. Also, when running an action that uses one of the tools, the interface opens up and replays the value selections you made when you created the action, and then closes the interface which can be very time consuming if you have a lot if images to work with. So if you don’t have too many images and have the time to select “Ok” for each conversion, and the ability to fine-tune a custom look using some of the most creative film emulations available today is important to you, then this might be the perfect option.

Gearing your workflow for high performance and getting custom results does not have to be at odds. If any custom action set cannot help you to obtain perfect results, and a lot of your success with actions may depend on getting proper exposure during capture, then at least the actions should help to achieve a base image that can be presented as a set of proofs to your client. I wish that I could only present masterpieces to my clients for their review, but I would prefer to spend my time working those images with the greatest potential for impact and the ones the client will pay me the big bucks for.

Getting signature quality black-and-white images is now easier than ever before. Choose plug-ins or actions that suit your needs, but don’t let toying around with them distract you from the main focus of selling your images. Don’t hesitate to automate as much of your black-and-white conversion as possible, and focus your time and energy on the style of black and white that you are passionate about. It will show in your attitude and your bottom line.

Steve Tout is the owner and principal photographer of Coffeehouse Photography, a boutique wedding photography shop in the Pacific Northwest.  He has worked in sales, consulting, Web development and information security for 10 years with recent positions at Oracle Corporation and US Bank. Readers can contact him directly by email at [email protected].