How To Enhance Black And White Photos Using Adjustment Layers In Photoshop

How To Enhance Black And White Photos Using Adjustment Layers In Photoshop – If you love black-and-white photography (as most photographers do), you’re probably aware of the many options for converting photos to black-and-white in Photoshop (and other software packages). Conversion is only the first step in processing black and white images. Once you get rid of the image color, you’ll need to manipulate the tone of the image to get the best results. This article will introduce you to some of the tools in Photoshop that you can use to create images with effects.

Before we jump straight into the list of tools, it’s important to distinguish between two different types of adjustments you can make to your images.

How To Enhance Black And White Photos Using Adjustment Layers In Photoshop

How To Enhance Black And White Photos Using Adjustment Layers In Photoshop

Global Adjustments – Global adjustments are adjustments that affect the entire image. For example, if you use the contrast slider in Lightroom, it will change the contrast of the entire image.

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As a global adjustment, the curved layer is meant to reduce highlights, but not in a nice way.

Local Adjustments – Local adjustments make specific adjustments to the image you define. For example, you can adjust the contrast of a portrait subject’s eyes and the contrast of his shirt separately.

A layer mask allows local adjustments, meaning that the curved layer only affects the midtones around the subject’s face.

These differences are important because in most cases you don’t want to make large global adjustments to the image. Most photos are composed of images of different elements. If you think of it as a portrait, imagine a person standing in the background of a studio as shown below.

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Splitting an image into tonal areas, then adjusting those areas individually Take full control of your photos if you have them.

Here you can split the image into several parts. You have the subject’s skin, eyes, clothes, hair, and background. Each of these components responds differently to different adjustments. With global adjustments, you change the appearance of these elements simultaneously.

For example, if you wanted to significantly increase the contrast of a shirt to bring out the texture, you would increase the contrast of the subject’s skin. In general, you don’t want to increase skin contrast. Mostly you want to reduce it.

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How To Enhance Black And White Photos Using Adjustment Layers In Photoshop

How about increasing the contrast of the shirt and decreasing the contrast of the skin? Using local customization.

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There are several ways to apply local adjustments to images in Photoshop. This is the ground they have.

The right tool for the job depends on the job at hand. Once you learn how to use most of these options, you’ll be armed with a variety of ways to apply local adjustments when editing black-and-white images.

Note that this is an introduction to the various tools you can use, not a complete tutorial.

Layer masks are probably the easiest and most common way to start making local adjustments in Photoshop. If you are not familiar with using Photoshop’s powerful but internal features, I recommend that you take the time to read it and get started as soon as possible.

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Effective layer masks prevent the adjustment layer from affecting (masking) unwanted parts of the image.

Layer masks help you isolate specific areas of an image that you want to edit. Here the title cap is dimmed.

In the example above, I created a Curves adjustment layer and filled the layer mask with black. Using a white brush (B) set to 100% opacity, I painted (by clicking on the layer mask) over the subject’s eyes. Now, no matter what I do with the curved layer, it affects the area I paint white on the layer mask.

How To Enhance Black And White Photos Using Adjustment Layers In Photoshop

With this method, you can create as many Curves Adjustment Layers (or any other type of adjustment layer) as you like, each affecting a specific part of the image. This way you can treat each element of your image individually.

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Here you can see three separate curved layers with their masks. Each works independently of the other. The first two are for darkening the image, and the top one is for brightening the background.

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When working with a layer mask, it can sometimes be difficult or impossible to isolate the specific areas of the image you want to work with. One useful technique in this case is the color range selector (Selection-> Color Range). This tool works very well when trying to select skins and surfaces.

Here you can see what the color range selector adds to your selection when you click on the lightest part of the image and set the opacity slider to its maximum value.

When you open this tool, you can select specific image color levels that you can apply to the layer mask. Since we are talking about editing black and white images, instead of choosing a color, you choose a volume.

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When the dialog box opens, click on any area of ​​the image you want to select to work on. You can now use the slider labeled “Blur” to adjust the size of the image to the desired range. To select only the brightest areas, click the brightest part of the image and drag the blur slider to the left. Once selected, you can create an adjustment layer and Photoshop will convert that selection to a layer mask.

There are many ways to set them up in Photoshop and with third-party plugins, so try different ways to solve this. A luminance mask gives you more control over the processing of black and white images.

Here’s an example of what a luminance mask might look like when placed over an image. Here I chose with a “light” mask. You should be able to see how powerful it is with all these options so you can easily select a specific volume.

How To Enhance Black And White Photos Using Adjustment Layers In Photoshop

In short, the Luminosity mask allows you to create a layer mask for each tone level of an image. They allow you to independently control the highlights, the darkest shadows and everything in between. With this control, you can customize every part of the image to your liking.

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One word of warning: if you leave the luminance mask in the file, the file size will be very large. Consider deleting photos before saving them.

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Now that you have several options for selecting and separating different parts and shades of your image, you have a huge selection of tools you can use to manipulate the tonality (and other aspects) of your image.

The custom adjustment layer is probably the easiest of these tools. When you create a layer, all you have to do is find the dropdown box and choose between white, neutral, or black. (Since this article deals with black and white images, you can leave both color options for now.

The color picker gives you full control over highlights, midtones and shadows. Move the black slider to the appropriate bar. It doesn’t offer the same level of control as other methods, but it’s fast and intuitive.

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After selecting any of these three options, look for a slider labeled Black at the bottom of the dialog. Dragging this slider to the right dims the associated sound. Dragging them to the left will make them lighter. Do this with all three (white, middle, black) for each part of the image and you’ll be able to control the image density with very little effort.

Also, if you’re still using layer masks, the fact that the custom color tool adjusts highlights, midtones, and shadows separately in the dialog means you can have some local control over all three. Coverage without using a sheet mask.

By controlling the curves in the dialog box, you have complete control over every minute of the contrast and volume of your images. Combine this tool with layer masks and you have a solution that will get you through many situations.

How To Enhance Black And White Photos Using Adjustment Layers In Photoshop

Applying the minimum S-curve allows you to see how different the image is.

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When it comes to editing black and white images, the curve tool helps you increase or decrease the contrast as needed. Because it is a complex tool with many nuances (it will

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