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B & W Conversion


fredfish

fredfish

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Some of the students I am working with are working on producing a Graphic Novel in the vein of Sin City as part of their course.

As a number of them aren't particularly adept with painting tools (although some of them are absolutely great!) they were given the option of taking some high contrast photos and then using Photoshop to turn them in to stylised images. To show them what can be achieved I had a little tinker with an image I found on Google and I was quite pleased with the result.

Here is the original.

colour to B and W1.jpg

Here is the worked version.

colour to B and W2.jpg

Although I am pleased with the result I am here to learn - any suggestions are welcome.

Cheers

John
 
I don't mind at all.


  • I duplicated the image (always a good idea IMHO)
  • Then I added a Curves adjustment layer. On this layer I used the "Set Black Point" option for a fairly light black part of the image - this had the effect of giving me some very black parts of the image. I then repeated this with the "Set White Point" option but doing the opposite (IE choosing some of the lighter parts of the image) - this needs a bit of playing with.
  • Next I merged the Curves adjustment layer with the copied layer.
  • Then I applied image/adjustments/Black & White - fiddeling with the sliders until I got a decent result.
  • The above gave me the B&W part of the image.


  • Then I went to the origional image and drew a fairly loose selection (using the lasso tool) around the lips.
  • Then promoted this selection to its own layer using Ctrl + J
  • I repeated this for the eyes (making sure that "Add to selection" was selected)


  • This gave me the eyes on their own layer and the mouth on its own layer.
  • On the eyes layer I added a fx / color overlay set to blend mode multiply - setting the colour to green.
  • On the mouth layer I added a Hue / saturation adjustment layer and boosted the saturation a little (making sure to clip the adjustment layer to the mouth layer).
  • Now it is just a case of adding a layer mask to the top layer (the B&W layer) and painting with Black to reveal the eyes and the mouth.

I hope that all makes sense.

If you want to look - here is the .psd

View attachment colour to B and W2.psd

Cheers John
 
Nice, i like it, it reminds me a poster of a movie or game but i cant remember wich one, silence of the lambs maybe...now i have to search for it :biglaff: .

Cheers!

btw: the only think a little bit off for me is the blur on the lips.
 
Last edited:
Thanks Argos - you think it would be better with a crisp edge? I suspect you may be right! I will give it a try.

Thanks for the feedback.

Cheers

John
 
Eggy said:
I really like this!

Again, there's more to Photoshop then composites.
Makes me think about exploring those possibilities...
Click to expand...

Thanks Eggy
I appreciate it :confused:

Cheers

John
 
Ditto the previous kudos, John, and what I'll add to them is that I particularly liked the transitions between black and white (particularly, on her cheek) in which there is a band of black speckles, but then inwards a bit is a band on much less speckled grays.

Nice!

Tom M
 
I like that Chris - I really have to get my head around frequency separation!!

Cheers

John
 
Argos said:
Nice, i like it, it reminds me a poster of a movie or game but i cant remember wich one, silence of the lambs maybe...now i have to search for it :biglaff: .

Cheers!

btw: the only think a little bit off for me is the blur on the lips.
Click to expand...

Probably is Silence.

That had a B/W picture of Jodi Foster and the moth and her eyes were colored in.
 
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