Photoshop CS2: Beyond Colour – Black and White and Sepia

What if you need a Black and White image to enter into a contest? Or, what if you shot a historic photo and the newspaper only prints black and white? In this article, Linda shows how to successfully convert your colour images into monochromatic legends. The tools that you’ll use include adjustments, histograms, Colour channels, Channel Mixer, and Calculations. In addition, once you have that perfect black and white image, Linda shows two different methods to add a sepia tone to that image.

Some History

It wasn’t until 1861 when Scottish physicist James Clerk-Maxwell demonstrated a colour photography system involving three black and white (B&W) photographs, each taken through a red, green, or blue filter. His first photo of a tartan ribbon was turned into lantern slides and projected in registration with the same colour filters. This was the beginning of the photographic colour separation method.

In 1906, panchromatic black and white film and therefore high quality colour separation colour photography were made available; and, in 1907, the first commercial colour film, the Autochrome plates, were manufactured by the Lumiere brothers in France. But, colour photography really didn’t catch on with the general public until 1936, when the development of Kodachrome, the first colour multi-layered colour film and the development of Exakta, pioneering 35mm single-lens reflex (SLR) camera were made available.

In fact, colour photography evolved rapidly during my lifetime. I remember when C-41 colour negative process was introduced in 1973, replacing C-22 in the darkroom. My fellow art students and I were mesmerized with the new process, a feeling that you might equate today with the introduction of any new technological product that makes life just a little bit easier.

But, as beginning photography students, we often were steered away from colour in our studies. B&W images, instead, became the vehicle to study depth of field and tonal values, and it was – in the long run – less expensive to develop in the darkroom. In addition, most magazines used B&W photographs until just ten years before this new colour development. Yes, hand-colouring negatives and prints was part of our education at that time.

Photoshop CS2: Creating Spot Colour Channels

Photoshop CS2: Creating Spot Colour Channels

In this article, Linda creates a graphic design problem to show how to create artwork for iron-on transfers, including a means to create a spot colour and how to save that colour in a spot colour channel. She also uses a rough logo and artwork that must merged, and shows how to convert those two images into one in ten easy steps, including how to layout that artwork for the transfer sheet. Tools used in this process include scaling and layout options covered in previous articles, the Unsharp Filter, the Warp tool, Create Outlines filter, and the use of Pantone Colour swatches, among many others.

Photoshop CS2: Extraction, Smudge, Heal, and More

Photoshop CS2: Extraction, Smudge, Heal, and More

Although Photoshop CS2 offers a few perks more than Photoshop 7, some of the same tools to retouch photos are unchanged. The Extraction tool, which helps to eliminate a background, is found as early as Photoshop 6. Healing, Patch, Smudge and Blur tools are also found in earlier Photoshop versions. In this tutorial, Linda illustrates when and how to use all these tools and more as a means to either retouch or to alter photographs.

Photoshop CS2: Altering Images

Photoshop CS2: Retouching in Channels

In the last tutorial, Linda explained how you could alter your images with levels and curves through adjustment layers. In this article, she shows how you can retouch your colour images through colour channels. This option allows users to change values, tones, and colour through channel modifications. An added bonus is that artefacts, or blemishes, can be reduced through the colour channel option as well. And, when that option doesn’t work, you can use colour channels to pick the best option for a black and white photo…

Colour Channels: The Hidden Realm

Many photographs might call for simple adjustments to the overall picture, such as a simple tonal and value alteration in photograph below:

The image at left was a little too dark in the shadows and the owner wanted to emphasize the filly a bit more. I brought up the mid-tones and reduce the shadows with the simple addition of a new adjustment layer for levels. Now the horse is more vivid and the details are more solid in the horse (more about adjustment layers and levels in the previous article).

But, other photographs – like the 1960’s era photograph below – call for more detailed work, and a simple adjustment layer just doesn’t cut the cake. The image below, for example, was altered with the same method that I used above with the following results:

Photoshop CS2: Jewel Case Cover Art

In this article, Linda illustrates how to merge images and type to create a jewel case insert for an imaginary client. In a step-by-step process she includes information about how to create paths with the pen tool, how to use these paths for text, and shows how to create a burned edge effect around an image by creating, saving and loading a selected area. Along the way she includes tips on how to make your workflow proceed faster as you begin to create this project or other projects that include type and images.