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Corey Barker posted a tip recently on Planet Photoshop that recommends my favorite technique for basic B&W conversion with Photoshop.

http://www.planetphotoshop.com/black-and-white-101-3.html

The same technique -- dragging for B&W adjustments -- works with Lightroom 2 and recent versions of Adobe Camera Raw.

The one defect in Corey's tips is brevity. His tips tend to be very stoccato, with no illustrations and not even enough description sometimes. I decided to expand on Corey's recent tip and work through a basic B&W conversion. Come along and look over my shoulder . . . And feel free to post questions or comments.

I shot the original photograph in New Orleans a few months ago. I liked the colors and the textures. When I was lookiong over recent photos for an example to convert to B&W for this coaching session, this photo was a good candidate for several reasons:

• It was a good candidate for selective B&W conversion. To preserve detail in the coat of arms, care would be needed.
• The shot was handheld and obviously not exactly parallel to the street sign. Some perspective correction would be required.
• Flash was used and the lighting was uneven. Some selective dodging and burning could help.

I started with the most severe problem first. Perspective correction. I used the Free Transform tool, adjusting by eye. You can see the adjustment, a portion of the Free Transform toolbar, and the result below. Honestly, I cannot remember if the coat of arms was more circular than oval or not. However, that would be easy to change. Just grab a couple of the handles and pull.

You could do the perspective adjustment after B&W conversion and basic adjustments to tone. I prefer to get it out of the way, rather than looking at a distorted photo while I work on it further. I also cropped the photo early on. If you know you're going to crop, doing it early helps speed Photoshop. Fewer pixels mean fewer pixels to process.

The next step was a basic levels adjustment. This boosted contrast. As a result, the tiles looked less dingy. It is beneficial to do basic adjsutments to color and tone before B&W conversion. Note, I say basic. You might need to tweak tone(s) after B&W conversion. For this photo, you'll see that I used three Levels and one Curves adjustment layer in the end.

I used a B&W adjustment filter. This is a lot better than many previous techniques, such as using the Channel Mixer. The sliders give you a lot of control over the B&W conversion. But my favorite technique is the one described by Carey Barker. First, you have to enable dragging by clicking the index finger icon on the Black and White adjustments filter palette. Then you hover the mouse over a tone you want to adjust and drag. Right to lighten similar tones and left to darken them.

My primary objective was to get as much detail in the coat of arms as possible. I knew that could leave me with less contrast elsewhere in the photograph. When you use the mouse drag, Photoshop CS4 examines the colors under the cursor and then applies similar changes to other pixels with similar color. Given how colors similar to some in the coat of arms could be found elsewhere in the photograph, some targeted adjustments to contrast would be needed elsewhere. You can view the B&W conversion and the final settings below. The top version is the unadjusted Black and White adjustment layer settings. The version underneath is the result of some dragging of tones.

The B&W conversion was just a start. I wanted something better.

The next step was to work on the contrast for the lettering. The dark blue in the insignia wanted to convert to deep shadows. Dragging with the Black and White adjustment left the lettering too light. A second Levels adjsutment was used with a layer mask to keep the adjustment away from the insignia.

You'll notice that the Levels adjustment used a Multiply blend at 25% opacity. This adds contrast to the darker pixels. When I just want a layer blend, I'll use something like Levels. Since it's an adjustment layer, the overhead is just a few hundred bytes. Rather than just whacking Levels or Curves sliders around, don't forget layer blends. They are powerful features.

The uneven lighting got some attention next. I used an Overlay layer filled with 50% gray for some dodging and burning. White will lighten, black will darken. You use the Brush tool with low opacity and make localized adjustments to tone. Below is the painted overlay layer and the result.

The image was still too dark for my taste. A quick and easy Curves adjustment brightened the highlights and quarter tones.

I was moving closer to being satisfied. I was still not happy with the uneven lighting for the sign's framing. I used a layer mask with a Layers adjustment layer to even out the tones. The Layer Blend was set to Screen in order to lighten the frame.

One major step remained. Sharpening. First, I resampled the photo to 240 dpi using Bicubic Sharper. I used the TLR Ouput Sharpening Panel for CS4. for the actual sharpening. I sharpened with the settings for Inkjet 240 ppi Glossy.

Take a quick look at the Layers palette for the final result. You'll notice that I placed all of the adjustments inside a layer group. That makes it easy to toggle the total effect on and off. Just make all of the layers active except for the Background layer. Then select Layer | New | Group from layers...

Now, you might find that you'd make some other adjustments. or, maybe even do some more dodging and burning. Whatever. The important feature to notice is that all of the adjustments, with the exception of the Free Transform, were done as adjustment layers. (Or, Smart Layer, in the case of sharpening.) That means they are non-destructive adjustments that can changed at any time.

Coming Soon! Benefactor bonus: original .PDF with layers and video demonstration.