How to Create Black and White Images Using Photoshop

Creating a strong black and white image is something photographers of almost every genre should know how to do. This helpful tutorial will show you everything you need to know to do it in Photoshop.

Coming to you from Aaron Nace over at Phlearn, this helpful tutorial will show you how to create a black and white image in Photoshop. If you're new to black and white imagery, it's important to note that a lot more goes into a successful conversion than simply changing the photo to monochrome, and by taking control of things like the relative luminosity of different colors in the conversion, you can create a much stronger image. If you're more a fan of Lightroom, note that you do almost the exact same process in that app. Instead of using the levels adjustment, you'll have to use curves, and instead of creating the vignette using layer masks, you can just use the radial filter and feather it to get the same effect Nace gets with a Gaussian blur. Once you're done, try playing with things like global contrast and the like; these often have different optimal values when an image is in black and white versus color.