Black and White Examples
Black & White Comparison
This page shows the difference between the different conversion techniques used for converting color images to black and white as described on the Converting To Black And White page.
The order of the images is in the conversion order as described on the above page.
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© Gary Nugent, 2005. The color original of a panoramic landscape showing a decent amount of cloud in the sky and plenty of green foliage. |
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Simple Greyscale Conversion. The color information has just been stripped out of the image. |
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Image Desaturation. Turn the image black and white by setting equal red, green and blue values for each pixel |
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Lab Mode. Convert the image to Lab Mode and delete either the A or B channel. |
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Channel Mixer. Break the color image into three channels, red, green and blue and treat each channel as a separate greyscale image. The three images combined make the final black and white image. Each channel can be independently modified to change the final result. Default Channel Mixer settings used. |
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Channel Mixer. The default settings were changed to brighten up the foliage and sky and produce a generally more punchy image. The values used were: Red: 108, Green: 12, Blue: -8. |
As you can see, the results from using the Channel Mixer in Photoshop give the best results and also provide the most control over the final picture. Each image will require its own tweaking but the default values in the Channel Mixer are a very good place to start.