Create Great Black and White Digital Photos With Adobe Photoshop Curves

7/31/2019 Create Great Black and White Digital Photos With Adobe Photoshop Curves

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iPhotoCourse.com Photography Tutorials

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Dodge and Burn Using Curvesfor Monochrome Images


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Lightroom Recover Highlights, Overexposure, and Colors from RAW

Copyright 2012 David L. Tong http://www.iphotocourse.com

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Table of ContentsiPhotoCourse.com Photography Tutorials ..................................................... 1

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Dodge and Burn Using Curves for Monochrome Images ... 1

Legal Disclaimers, Copyrights, and End User Rights ................................. 2

Copyright Notices .................................................................................................................. 2

Impress the World With Your Monochrome Images Using These Dodge & Burn Techniques ................................................................................. 4


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Impress the World With Your Monochrome ImagesUsing These Dodge & Burn Techniques

While there are many methods to convert colored images to monochrome, the initial result is hardlysatisfying. Much like traditional black and white film images, the images usually require some darkroom

magic to bring out the best in those images, the same can be said with digital images.

The most common art to master is to learn how to dodge and burn your monochrome images to create

stunning contrast and tonality. Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom both allow you to perform

dodge and burn enhancement but Photoshop offers more control and customization.

If theres a digital image that deserves some time for post-processing, it will be monochrome images.

Digital image files allow you to have infinitely-variable fine-tuning with instant image feedback, which is

a far more flexible way to create monochrome magic compared to a chemical darkroom.

For this tutorial, well be using Curves Adjustment Layers for dodge and burn adjustments. As Ive

mentioned previously, there are many ways to do this, but for this tutorial, well be using two curve

adjustment layers, which offers a lot of flexibility for adjustments.

As Ive mentioned previously in our Lightroom monochrome conversion article , the key to a good

monochrome image is to choose the right photo to begin with. Some images are just better in color,

while others are just screaming to be devoid of color, in time, youll have a feel for which image works

best for monochrome.

Lets get started.
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Workflow for Stunning Monochrome Images

1) Select your color photo. Ive chosen this old photo that I took in Chinatown, Singapore as there

are a lot of tones between the bright lights and darkness of the night. The angular buildings and

signs offers good contrast as well.

2) To have a feel of what the image may look like in monochrome, just desaturate the image first

as a preview. Press CTRL-U to bring up the Hue/Saturation adjustment menu and drag the

saturation slider all the way to -100.


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If you like how it looks, then go ahead and continue working on this photo. Undo thedesaturation by clicking cancel or CTRL-Z (if youve closed the Hue/Saturation window already).

3) Now that were back with our colored photo, convert your photo with your favorite

monochrome conversion technique or plug-in. In this example, I used a simple gradient map

adjustment layer for the monochrome conversion.


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This is what came out.

4) As always, we need to set our black and white points in our image. To do that, we create a

Levels Adjustment Layer first.

We click on the little black eyedropper icon and click the area in your image where you

want your pure blacks should be.

Then click the white eyedropper icon and select your absolute white point. In this

sample, I chose the sky in the upper right corner as my pure black, and the brightest

part of the 2nd-story window as my pure white.


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5) Once we have our desired monochrome image we can start dodging and burning. Well be using

Curve Adjustment Layers for this tutorial.

First, create a dodge layer. This is an adjustment layer that will lighten the areas of the scene

you choose to isolate later on.

I renamed the layer as BURN, for easy reference.


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As you can see, all I did was drag the center-most section of the diagonal line straight-up to

about midway between the top and the mid-point.

We dont want the whole image to be bright, so lets hide this under a mask first. See that little

white rectangle in your Burn adjustment layer?


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We need to invert that to make it a black mask (which hides all the effects of that layer).

You can do that by simply pressing CTRL+I on a PC or use CMD+I on a Mac, the rectangle willnow turn black and your image will return back to what it originally was prior to the curves

layer.

6) Now we need another layer to darken certain parts of the scene. We basically do the same thing

as the Burn layer but instead of lightening the image, we darken it.

Again, create another Curves adjustment layer and label it as DODGE. This time, drag the

center point of the diagonal line straight down.


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Again, we select the layer mask rectangle and hide everything for now.

Now we have two Curves layer named Dodge and Burn. Time to do some dodge and burn

magic!


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7) Lets start with the Burn layer first. What this layer does is lighten certain parts of the scene we

want to put more contrast on against its darker surroundings or lift up darker shadows.

Click on the Burn layer and select the black rectangle mask icon weve made earlier.

8) Select your brush tool and choose a soft-edge (0 hardness) brush and set the brush opacity

between 15-30%.

I prefer using a lower opacity as it allows me finer control when painting over the mask.

9) Press D on your keyboard to reset your color palette to white/black then press X on your

keyboard until your foreground color is set to white.


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10) Start painting the areas you want to brighten up with your white brush. What youre

essentially doing is revealing the lighter tones caused by the adjusted curve in your Burn

layer. The white that you see in your layer mask is the revealed areas, while the black are the

hidden areas not affected by the adjustment curve.

For this exercise, you can see which areas received a lighter tone from our burning process.

You can see that I brightened the light reflections on the sidewalk and road, street sign

highlights, the passing bus, and the building near the top left corner.


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11) Well now do the same to darken certain areas of the scene by working on the Dodge layer.

Again, select the layer mask and start painting with a white brush.

and we get this

As you can see, the sidewalk shadows were darkened, as were the building windows, the shadows

underneath the awnings, etc.


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12) As a result of our two curves adjustment layers (dodge and burn), we now have this image.

We can end right here, but its not very refined. If youre curious, these are the areas where we

revealed the darker areas for this layer.

You can see that the transition of the edges are pretty abrupt in the smaller sections of the mask, we

can soften that effect by blurring the layer mask edges itself.


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13) We will now blur the layer mask of both the Dodge and Burn layer just to soften the

transition of our mask. We do this by using the Gaussian Blur tool (Filters >> Blur >> Gaussian

Blur).

The amount depends on your image size, the sharpness of your mask edges, etc. Try to

experiment with the values and check the preview.

14) Lastly, I reduced the opacity of both Dodge and Burn layer to about 60-70% and were done,

just flatten your image and save.


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Copyright 2012 David L Tong http://www iphotocourse com

This is our final image.

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Create Great Black and White Digital Photos With Adobe Photoshop Curves