While a lot of my photographs have a strong emphasis on bold and intense colours, I really take particular pleasure in black and white photography.

First, there is just the intangible mystique around BW…for some reason, I just like it. Also, without the distraction of colour, the photographs is distilled to its very essence focussing on strong compositional and story-telling elements. Finally, I can really let my creative side go wild with BW photographs without turning my photograph “nuclear” .

Today, I decided to provide a little tutorial on how I convert my images to BW. (The bullets are numbered according to the photographs in the gallery below)

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1- The choice of your photograph is critical, your image must rely on strong composition, not just on colour for its success. I shoot my photographs in RAW and process them in colour until I am satisfied with the final result.

2- There are several methods to do your conversion, however, I personally prefer using the black and white adjustment layer in Photoshop CS3 or CS4.

3- Once the layer created, I simply go with one of the presets and tweak it from there. Since I like dramatic and contrasty skies, I find that the red filter is often a good starting point.

4- Once the filter selected, just play around with the sliders until you are satisfied. There are no recipes here, so don’t be afraid to experiment (I don’t make mistakes, I just experiment!!).

5- In this particular photo, I decided that the sky and water portions needed a different treatment: I wanted a dark, dramatic cloudy sky, but clear waters for better contrast. To do this, I need to make two separate BW conversions and use masks to hide parts of each conversion.

Here we need to mask the “water portion”: select the eraser (1), set the foreground and background colour to default (press D -2-) and select the mask on the black and white layer (3)

6- To make a smooth transition between the selection areas, set the eraser hardness at 0%

7- Erase the bottom part of the image.

8- Redo steps 3-7 for the bottom part of the image. I used the green filter here as it gave me the effect I was looking for.

9- To make the water even lighter, I added a “level” adjustment layer and bringing in the highlights slider towards the left.

10- As a finishing step, I like to tone the black and white photographs. Again, there are several options here, including the “tint” function in the BW adjustment layer, however, I prefer using the “color balance”  as it gives me more flexibility. Experimentation is key, so just have fun and play around with the colours until you get the right effect. Note that I never push any slider beyond 10 on either side.

10- Tadaaa…your final product…

Does it work for you?