There are many B&W conversion tutorial out there, but this one takes some less traveled paths and the results are worth it. We will create a black and white portrait that has the old-fashioned look of film photography. We’re using this photograph of Mr. Pieter Coetzee which I took in 2005 on a tall ship (Sea Cloud) in the Mediterranean Sea. The picture is copyright protected, but for the purpose of this tutorial you are allowed to download the original and follow along.

Open the image in Photoshop and, in the Layers palette, add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer (click on the half black, half white icon at the bottom of the layers palette to find the adjustment layers).  When the Hue/Saturation dialog pops up, don’t do any changes yet, just hit Ok.

Let’s move to the channels palette and study which channel has the best contrast. Click on the each of the Red, Green and Blue channels (this will make visible only the respective channel, while hiding the others; or you can just toggle the visibility with the eye icons). Red is too light, Blue is too dark, but Green seems to have the best contrast. You don’t have to do anything, just keep this in mind for the next step. Click on the RGB channel to make all the channels visible (except for the Hue/Saturation 1 Mask, which we don’t need), then return to the Layers palette.

Back to the Layers palette, double-click the half white-half black symbol on the Hue/Saturation layer that you added at the first step. This will open the Hue/Saturation dialog. Set the Saturation slider to -90. Hit Ok. Then, in the Layers palette, set the blending mode of this layer to Color.

Still on the Hue/Saturation layer, add another adjustment layer, and this time choose Curves. The new layer should appear at the top of the Layers palette. In the Curves dialog, choose Green from the Channel drop-down list (as you remember, Green was the channel with the best contrast). Then, from the three samplers at the bottom of the window, choose the black point sampler (the left one) and click on the darkest spot in the image (somewhere on the hat, behind his ear); then, with the white point sampler (the one at the right), click on a light part from the collar of his shirt. This is not the brightest spot and therefore it will cause the some of the whites to show overexposed, but this is all right in this case, because the intent is, remember, to create an old-fashioned, film-like, black and white image. Click ok to close the Curves dialog.

Next, let’s create a snapshot of your image in a new layer at the top of all others. With the top most layer selected, hit Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E. Now, with this layer selected, choose Filter > Artistic > Film grain and use the settings below. Save your work and you’re done!

Tags: photoshop retouching black&white conversion desatur

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