Something happened around the late 1990’s that saw a dramatic decrease in the number of black and white pictures being published. Though there were still a good number monochrome pictures being produced, it suddenly became more trendy for commercial photography and photojournalism to be shot in bright color.

I think with the loss of film, many of us started losing our taste for black and white images. Maybe that’s because it’s trickier to get a good looking black and white image now, as the one-stop “convert to black and white” button in cameras rarely do a stellar job.

Though black and white is still a very popular way of finishing a picture, within the realm of digital photography it’s more realistic to shoot in color and convert the picture in post-processing after the fact. This can be done differently in different software, but we’ll approach the Photoshop and the Lightroom method. Any application that gives you control over color channels and a conversion tool will allow you to get similar results, though.

Photoshop

The most common (and quickest) way of turning a color picture to a black and white is through the use of the Desaturation option under Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. This method gives you no control over how the colors are shifted to their monochrome level – so you end up with poor results. Despite this, it’s the most popular method of doing the conversion.

Instead of giving up all control to Photoshop, you can use the channel mixer to specifically alter each color channel seperately, thereby allowing you to increase or decrease the amount of control on tonally different locations within the image. In other words, you’ll end up with a stronger black and white shot.

In Photoshop you can go to Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer to open it up. Check the box called “Monochrome” to make the initial conversion. Now you can adjust the Red, Green, and Blue sliders independently. Try playing around with them a bit, but use the 100% Rule as a guide. All the channel percentages should add up to roughly 100% to keep the same level of brightness and contrast in the image.

Lightroom

Because Adobe Lightroom is designed with photographers in mind (as opposed to Photoshop which is first and foremost a graphic design application) it’s a little easier to make these sorts of adjustments in this application.

When you open a color photo under the Develop view, you’ll see an HSL / Color / Grayscale palette on the right. By clicking on Grayscale you’ll do your initial conversion. The same kind of controls you get in Photoshop with the Channel Mixer are right there as Grayscale Mix in that palette, allowing you to independently control the various color channels (broken down further than in Photoshop). By moving a color slide to the right, you increase the brightness of that channel, and decrease it if you slide left.

I like a little extra contrast in my pictures, so I’ll usually bump that up, as well as the blacks.

There are also several presets on the left side of the same view in Lightroom, allowing you to quickly convert to Antique Grayscale, typical Grayscale, Sepia, or others. Rolling over these presets will give you a preview of the effect in in the Navigator window. You can also save your own Grayscale Mix to the presets list by clicking the plus symbol next to the Presets header.

While some cameras do have a black and white conversion mode, allowing you to shoot that way in-camera, it’s usually not the best choice. First of all – who knows what pictures you want in B&W and which you want in color at the time you shoot? Typically (or ideally) you want to make that decision after the fact, when you’ve had time to mentally process the image. Second, the conversion in-camera is essentially just a desaturation of the image, which is not the best way to get a good quality monochrome image. It will remove all the color, but those “greys” that result from desaturating usually have a lack of contrast or tonal panache.

Getting great black and whites is a matter of some subtle manipulation, and Adobe Lightroom is one of the best (and most straight forward) pieces of software with which to achieve this. I just love Lightroom.

Martin Evening is a studio and fashion photographer who works closely with Adobe, and over at the Lightroom News blog he explains (in video) how to best convert a color image to black and white. Check it out!