Black and White Trick

There are two ways of doing the Black and White Trick. You can use an adjustment layer or you can simply desaturate your image. I normally use the adjustment layer because you are able to delete it at any time if you decide you want to go back to color.




#1 Desaturate

Step 1. Use the [Ctrl] [J] shortcut to duplicate your image.

Step 2. Go to "Image" --> "Adjustments" --> "Desaturate". Or use Shortcut [Shift] [Ctrl] [U].







#2 Black & White Adjustment layer

Step 1. Go to the "New Adjustment Layer" button at the bottom of your Layers Pallet. (It's a circle that is half white and half black.)

Step 2. You will have a new window pop up. You can play with these adjustments to see how the affect the image, but I usually stick with the default settings. (Tip: At the bottom of this pop up window you will see a "tint" check box. If you check this and set your Hue to 42 and your saturation to 15 you will get a nice "Sepia tone" effect.)

Step 3. Click OK.

Either way is fast and effective. Some older versions of Photoshop don't have the Adjustment layer option. If you have one of these versions just go with the desaturation option.

As always comments are welcome!