Let Photoshop give you a better black and white photo effect

We often sweep the old black-and-white photos into the computer, but also in order to get special effects with Photoshop color image processing black and white effect, perhaps you would say, it is not a simple adjustment of lightness, contrast to move on OK? But can you be sure that the effect of the grayscale image is the best? The following tips for working with grayscale images in Photoshop will help you better show the charm of black and white gray.

Learning Focus: Picture black and white field of understanding, Levels Color Level dialog box use.

1. Open a grayscale image to adjust in Photoshop. Can see the picture gives a person's feeling is very insipid, gray.

2. For color adjustment, most of this technique will be done in the Levels (level) dialog. Select the Levels (level) command under adjust (adjust) In the Image menu Drop-down list.

As we can see from the diagram, the Input dialog box has three sliders, the Black slider representing the dark area (black field), the gray slider for the middle hue and the white slider representing the high bright area (white field), and their position is relative to the value in the box above. In the middle of the big box like a mountain column chart shows the picture's tonal status.

The histogram of this example shows that the leftmost dark area and the far right light area have no numerical value, indicating that this picture lacks the necessary highlights and dark parts, no contrast, so the picture is gray.

3. OK, now that we know the problem of the picture, we begin to modify it.

First you set the parameters for the levels level, and there are three eyedropper tools under the Auto button on the right side of the dialog box. Double-click on the left side of the black field parameters, then appear the Color Picker dialog box, select the black target color (that is, to determine the future of the image in the darkest of black), if you do not want to make the picture too black, To avoid losing some detail, you can set four values to 0, 0, 0, and 95 in the CMYK field, and click OK.

4. Similarly, double click on the right side of the white field straw, set the bright area of white (that is, to determine how white the brightest place in the future picture), also in order to retain some details, with the above method, reduce some whiteness, the CMYK values are set to 0, 0, 0, 5, click OK OK.

5. Now, the Levels Level dialog box is still open, and we're starting to change the image.

Let's first determine which part of the image is the darkest: while holding down the ALT key and dragging the leftmost black slider slowly to the right, the image will change to full white, noting that the first part that appears in the figure is the darkest part of the image, remembering the location of this section.

6. You can mark in the picture to help you remember the position, the way is when the darkest position, change the SHIFT key, the mouse into a straw-like, then click on the image of the first occurrence of that position, the mark, as shown. If you want to delete the mark, or hold down the SHIFT key to put the mouse on the marker point, when the mouse into a black little angle, you can move the marker, drag the tag to the outside of the picture can be deleted.

7. Next determine the location of the light area. As in the above method, select the rightmost white slider and hold down ALT while dragging to the left. At this point the image will be All Black, remember the first white area appears, make a mark.

8. Know the darkest and brightest point, the following work will be much easier, click the Black eyedropper tool below the Auto button, click on the darkest part of 1 that is marked in the picture, click the White Eyedropper tool, click on the brightest part of the picture that has just been marked 2, and now you can see the change in the image.

9. Usually this modification, the contrast is somewhat too strong, the lack of detail, you can add some intermediate tones to solve. Drag the middle gray slider slightly to the left to highlight the midtones. This operation needs to use your eyes to determine the degree of movement, so you have to be patient yo! Basically, the median tonal value is no more than 1.5, which can be used as a reference. When you are tuned to your desired effect, you can click the OK button on the right to end the level Levels dialog box.

10. Now the main operation has been completed, compared to the effect, it is quite obvious it. If you have some miscellaneous points on the image, Fuzzy Ah, and so on, you can use the speckle, sharpening and other filters to do the modification.

Tip: In this case, because we're using a grayscale graph, we use the black and white field eyedropper tool to change the black and white Gray range. If we're using a picture with a color, choose any color you like when you define a black and white straw, and try to adjust the color so that it may surprise you with your creative color.