Converting Color Photos To Grayscale

In this tutorial, we'll look at the absolute quickest and easiest way of converting color photos into black and white in Photoshop, which is by changing their color mode from RGB to Grayscale.

Normally, digital photos and images are in what's called the "RGB" color mode. "RGB" simply stands for "Red, Green and Blue", and the reason it's called the "Red, Green and Blue" color mode, without getting into a lengthy discussion about color theory, is because red, green and blue are the primary colors of light. It sounds almost impossible, but every color our eyes can see is made up of some combination of red, green and blue. Also, every electronic device that either displays or captures images, whether it's your tv, your computer monitor, your scanner, or your digital camera, displays or captures them using red, green and blue, since what they're actually displaying or capturing is light, and red, green and blue are the primary colors of light.

If that makes no sense to you right now, don't worry. We don't need to get any further into color theory than that for what we're doing here, which is converting our digital photos from the RGB color mode into the Grayscale color mode.

Here's the image I'll be using:

Right now, this digital photo is in its normal RGB color mode. I know this because at the top of my Document Window, Photoshop is giving me information about my image. Here, Photoshop is telling me that the name of my photo is "cathedral.jpg", its current zoom level is 100%, I have "Layer 0" selected in my Layers palette, and to the right of that, it says "RGB/8", which means that my image is currently in the RGB color mode and it's an 8-bit image. The asterisk after the "8" is there to remind me that I either haven't yet saved my Photoshop document, or I've made changes to the document since the last time I saved it.

I can also tell that my image is currently in the RGB color mode by going up to the Image Menu at the top of the screen, then hovering my mouse over the very first option in the list, "Mode", which will bring up a sub-menu of the various color modes and bit depths for an image in Photoshop. The checkmark to the left of "RGB Color" in the list tells me that my image is currently in the RGB color mode.

This "Mode" submenu under the Image Menu not only tells us which color mode our image is currently in, it also allows us to change the color mode simply by selecting one of the other color modes from the list.

Currently "RGB color" is selected. In order to quickly convert my color photo into black and white, I need to convert it into the Grayscale color mode. To do that, all I have to do is click on the word "Grayscale" in the list.

When I click on the word "Grayscale" to convert my image into the Grayscale color mode, Photoshop will pop up a little alert box asking me if I want to discard the color in my image.

Since that's exactly what I want, I'll click "OK", telling Photoshop it's safe to take all the color in my photo and toss it out the window, converting my photo into black and white.

And there we have it, our original color digital photo converted quickly and easily into black and white.

Summary

Just to summarize so you don't have to read through all of this again next time, to quickly convert your color photo into Grayscale, simply open it up inside Photoshop, then go up to the Image Menu at the top of the screen, select "Mode" which is the first option in the list, and then select "Grayscale" from the list of choices. Click "OK" when Photoshop asks if you want to discard the color in the image, and you're done! How easy it that?

Of course, the biggest problem with using this method to convert color photos into black and white is that you have absolutely no control over anything. Photoshop simply strips the color out of your image with no regard for image quality. If this is all you want out of your black and white conversion, then this method is fine, but there are better ways, as we'll see in the next sections.

Up next in our look at how to convert color photos into black and white, we'll see how to accomplish it using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.