Better Black and White Photos with Channels

Sometimes the best things are already there, waiting to be discovered ;)

In this tutorial I will demonstrate how you can use Photoshop to extract a channel from a picture for better black and white conversion.

This is my original shot:


The first thing you have to do is open the channels window by clicking on the 'Channels' tab (next to the 'Layers' tab in the layers window or Window > Channels). As you can see, in an RGB image we have the red, green, and blue channel:


All you have to do now is choose the one you like the most (in my case I prefer the green channel) and click on it.

Next, convert the image to grayscale (Image > Mode > Grayscale), otherwise you won't be able to save it as a black-and-white image.

Finally, you might want to increase the contrast a little. You can do so by duplicating the layer (click on the 'Layers' tab or Window > Layers, right-click on the background layer > duplicate layer) and choosing the 'soft light' blending mode from the drop-down menu:


If the contrast is now too much, you can gradually decrease the opacity of the duplicated layer until you get the desired effect. My final result looks now like this:


Now it's your turn--see the world in black and white!