Converting Color Photos To Black And White Using Hue/Saturation

In the previous tutorial, we looked at the quickest and easiest way to convert a color photo into black and white by converting it to Grayscale mode. In this tutorial, we'll look at another very easy way to convert color images to black and white in Photoshop, this time by completely desaturating the colors in our photo using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

I'll use the same image as I did in the section on converting to Grayscale:

There's two ways that we can access Photoshop's "Hue/Saturation" image adjustment control. One way is to go up to the Image Menu at the top of the screen, then choose "Adjustments" from the list of options, and from there, choose "Hue/Saturation". For the sake of this tutorial, since all we're doing is a quick black and white conversion, choosing the Hue/Saturation adjustment from the Image Menu would be fine.

The problem though with using the Hue/Saturation adjustment from the Image Menu, or any of the adjustments from the Image Menu, is that the adjustment you make is done directly to the image itself. You're physically altering the pixels in your digital photo or image when you use these adjustments. There's a much better way, a way that allows you to make many of the exact same adjustments found under the Image Menu, without laying a virtual finger on your photo, and that's by using Adjustment Layers.

We'll save any detailed discussion about Adjustment Layers for another section. We're just going to go ahead and use an adjustment layer, the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

The quickest way to access all of your adjustment layers is by clicking on the New Fill/Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette. It's the icon that looks like a circle half-filled with black and half with white.

This brings up a list of all the available Fill and Adjustment Layers. The one we want is "Hue/Saturation". Click on it in the list to select it.

Two things will happen when you select "Hue/Saturation" from the list. Photoshop will add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to your Layers Palette directly above the layer with the photo on it (the Background layer), and the rather large Hue/Saturation dialog box will appear on your screen.

There's only one option in the Hue/Saturation dialog box that we're interested in for converting our color photo to black and white, and that's the one right in the middle, "Saturation". See the slider bar directly beneath the word "Saturation"? Grab the slider handle with your mouse by clicking on it, and then drag it all the way to the left. This will completely desaturate the colors in our photo, leaving us with a black and white version of our photo.

There's one more step you can take here to improve the black and white image. If you look at your Layers Palette, you'll see that you have two layers - the Background layer which contains your photo, and the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer above it. If the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer isn't selected (if it isn't highlighted), click on it to select it. We're going to change the blend mode of this adjustment layer.

Up at the top of the Layers palette, you'll see a selection box which currently displays "Normal" in it. This is the Layer Blend Mode selection box. Layer Blend Modes affect how the layer you've selected blends in with the layers below it in the Layers palette. By default, it's set to "Normal", which simply means that nothing special is happening with the way the layer is blending in with the layers below it.

If you click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the selection box, you'll bring up a list of all the Blend Modes we have to choose from. The one we want is way down near the bottom, "Color".

By choosing the "Color" Blend Mode for our adjustment layer, we're making sure that we're only affecting the colors in the image, not the luminosity (lightness) values.

Here's the black and white version of the photo once again, this time with the blend mode of the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer set to "Color". Notice how the contrast seems better in this version. I'll include the original black and white version directly below it to make it easier to compare the two:

The difference is subtle, but changing the blend mode of the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer from "Normal" to "Color" did improve the contrast somewhat. Try it with your photos and see which blend mode works best for you.

That's our look at how to convert a color photo to black and white using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer in Photoshop. Next, we'll look at how to convert color images to black and white using the Luminosity Blend Mode in the Layers palette .