The Fajitas' Guide to B&W

Fajitas!

Yay...I'm finally bored enough to do this.

I'm gonna divide this up into a few different parts;

*The B&W Conversion

*Dodging & Burning

*Adding 'That' Glow

*Diffusion

*Correcting Underexposure

*Vaseline on the lens

Some are pretty short, such as diffusing and correcting underexposure. I'm using CS2, so it really helps to have that. If you want to ask questions later, fire away. Don't forget to PM me when I undoubtably forget something, or if you want help.

I'll probably post up a few more little tricks in here when they come back to me.

Starting it all off:

The Black and White Conversion

Open your colour photograph in CS2, as normal. First off (And I'd advise this with everything you do on photoshop, so if you feic up, you can go back to the original) duplicate your background layer. Call it anything you want. I'm not anal enough to call my different layers anything

Click the "Create new fill or adjustment layer button", in the layers palette, circled below:


Select "Solid Colour..." and when the palette opens, tick the "only web colours" option and select any of the greys there. It should look something like this:


From here, go to the blending methods, in your layers palette, and where it says 'Normal' click the down arrow, and go for 'Colour'.

You have a B&W image, congratulations. Here's the fun part:

Click on the layer that your image is on, in the case of the example above, it would be background, in your case, it would be background copy or whatever you decided to title it.

Click back on that "Create new fill or adjustment layer" button, and click on 'Selective Colour'. From here, you can change the amount of tones and hues in each colour. The tones and hue's are effectively your contrast. Play around with them to see what does what. It'll effect each photograph differently, you'll catch on very fast. Your Whites, Neutrals and Blacks have the most effect in general.

There's only so much explaining I can type here, if it dosn't make sense, try it

Next up, Dodging and Burning.

Fajitas!

Dodging and Burning

Alot of people say they can't dodge or burn in photoshop. Pssh, it's easy, you just gotta know the right settings, and where to dodge and burn.

First of all, the dodge and burn tools' preset setting in Photoshop are MUCH too strong. Reduce both of them to 12% if not lower for most of your work. If you need to make it darker, you can always work over what you've already dodged or burnt.

Next of all, there's a little box that says Range: which is usually set for midtones.

When your starting out on a photo, midtones isn't what you want to affect. Maybe later, but generally, not at the start. Put your Burn tool onto Shadows, and your Dodge tool onto Highlights. Effectivly, darkening your darks, and lightening your lights.

(If you use curves, contrast/brightness or levels, it'll click fairly fast that this can work as localised contrast )

Next thing you do is bring the softness of your brush right down to zero, until you know where you're going next.

Fire away with burning what you think needs to be darkened, and lightening what needs to be brighter. It really is as simple as that. When you're comfortable with it, experiment with the settings.

Also, remember that contrast can lead to an impression of sharpness...that can be handy

Fenster

Huzzah!

Fajitas!

The Glow

This is something I posted up a while back, a few people seemed to like it so I'll put it in here so others can use it.

It's really quite simple. Duplicate your layer, and straight off, change the blending method to 'Overlay' (Or soft light...or just experiment - I like the contrast Overlay gives me.)

Go to your filters, go to Blur, and Gaussian Blur. Select a REALLY high amount, anthing from 40-50 pixels to 100. Make sure the preview is on. See what glow suits. When your happy, apply it, and if you want more detail or less contrast showing through, you can always reduce the Opacity or Fill of the layer. This works great for portraits, as it's quite flattering, especially to bad skin. I've often had up to 5 or 6 of these glow layers.

Fajitas!

Diffusion

This works well in photos where you have way too much contrast between your high and low lights. You know the stark, almost unsharp mask'd looking photos, that never feel right?

What this essentially does is make the highlights and shadows bleed into each other.

Duplicate your layer, as you normally would.

Press CTRL + I, or go to Image/Adjustments/Invert to invert your image.

Go to Filter/Distort/Diffuse Glow and clicky.

I generally select a high Clear Area value, and a low Glow Amount, and adjust the graininess to suit.

When you apply it, you'll see the shadows and highlights have bled into each other, to create a diffused glow. It's not an entirely different look to the other glow method, but it can be used to avoid getting as much contrast.

Fajitas!

Correcting Underexposed Photos

I usually use this when I feic up a gig shot, and I know it's a keeper, or a street shot that's been underexposed, and wouldn't suffer from a lot of grain.

As simple as this is,it's is also a CS2 only move... Sorry.

Go to Image - Adjustments - Shadow/Highlight.

Kablamo. Instant push processing

Use the basic sliders to see what you can get, they're pretty obvious. Luckily, since this is a black and white tutorial, I'm not worried what this is doing to the colours

Use the advanced settings if your not happy, you'll eventually figure it out.

Sorry if this is very short, and feels like a cheap shot at filling space, but it's got so many photo's usable for me, I couldn't not mention it.

Fajitas!

Vaseline

This is for photos you want to take away distracting features around the edges. It can look really cool too tbh.

Duplicate your layer.

Select you lasso, and put the feather to 150 pixels, or 100 if your using a small enough resolution. Select, very randomly and loosly, the main subject of the photograph.

Go to Filters - Blur - Motion Blur.

Apply a fair bit of it, until you're happy with the strength and angle. Click ok.

Duplicate that layer, and select the lasso again, reduce the feathering down to 50 or 70. Select a looser circle around the image, and apply some more motion blur, leaving the angle and strenght up to your own discretion.

You can repeat this til your happy with the image. Remember to play with your opacity and blending methods to get different effects. I reccommend soft light and overlay for this aswell. Keep on experimenting


Now...All that should keep a few people quiet for a day or too...

Sorry if it's not as all-impressive and complicated as people thought... I haven't attached pictures because I think it's all pretty explanitory once photoshop is open.

leinsterman

Hmnnn ... may just have to get you some Sammy ...

Fajitas!

Try Red Stripe