yesterday I was working on converting this photo to black and white whilst I was doing
this I realized I used a couple of techniques that you might not so in this video I'm going to show
you what I did to create the black and white conversion I'll be working with affinity photo 2
but you can use the first version as well as Photoshop to do the same thing I've already opened
the color image in Affinity photo and I'll start by adding a black and white adjustment layer I'm
sure many of you are already familiar with this adjustment layer but for anyone who isn't it
allows you to control how the colors in an image convert to black and white taking the sand slider
as a quick example when I move it left cyan areas of the image like the sky become darker than when
I move it to the right it makes them lighter the first thing to do when using this adjustment is to
understand how each slider affects the image but it's important you check this for each slider on
its own take the first slider moving it left and then right whilst watching the effect on the image
you then return the slider to its default position so that it doesn't affect the other sliders when
you've checked all the sliders you'll probably find two or three that have a big effect on the
image these are the sliders you're going to use to adjust the black and white conversion this image
is a bit unusual because we have four sliders that create a strong effect these are the red
yellow cyan and blue sliders but there's also a problem I need to highlight when converting
this image to black and white watch what happens when I move the sand slider to the left it creates
a powerful black and white conversion of the mountain range whilst darkening the sky but look
what's happened to the river it's almost vanished into the landscape what I really wanted with this
image is for the river to appear Almost White and so it stands out against the landscape and for
that I need to move the Scion slider to the right now we have have the river clearly separated from
the landscape but look what's happened to the sky and mountains they look terrible this is quite a
common problem with converting landscape photos to black and white which brings me onto what
I do differently when using a black and white adjustment layer you see I don't use just one
layer but instead I add two or more layers to the image to get the best from this image like
a lot of landscape images we need to convert some areas differently to others let's start
by converting only the sky and mountains to black and white to do this I'll move the cyan slider to
the left this produces a nice level of contrast in the mountains without losing any detail next I'll
move the blue slider to the left to darken the sky at mountains but to a lesser degree the mountains
of Sky now look great but the foreground looks terrible and we can't see the river let's close
the dialogue now because I want to add a mask to the layer I'm going to to use this to hide
the black and white conversion on the lower part of the image I'll do this by drawing a
black gradient onto the mask I can then adjust the gradient to leave the foreground in color
now I can add a second black and white adjustment layer above the first one this converts the lower
part of the image but it doesn't have any effect on the area already converted to black and white
now I can move the sand slider to the right to lighten the river to make the river stand out
even more against the landscape I can then move the yellow slider to the left to darken the land
then to add a little bit more definition into the landscape I'll move the red slider right I'm now
controlling the black and white conversion using two separate adjustment layers One controls the
mountains and Sky whilst the other controls the foreground and River now for another technique I
use with these layers which can further enhance the conversion I'm going to do this by adding a
levels adjustment just below the two black and white convert Vision layers it's important that
this is below the black and white layers because we want to use it to alter the Hues in the color
image in the levels dialog I'm now going to select each of the three color channels in turn starting
with the red then I can move the gamma slider left and right to see how it affects the black
and white image before picking the best next switch to the green Channel and try the same
moving the slider left and right and finally switch to the blue Channel and do the same
if I turn off the two black and white adjustment layers you can see what's happening to the colors
in the image by moving the gamma sliders for the individual color channels I'm changing the color
balance in the image this then affects how the black and white adjustment layer converts the
color image into black and white it's also why it's important to put the layer below the black
and white conversions watch what happens if I add a levels adjustment layer at the top of the other
layers instead know when I change change one of the color channels it adds a color tone to the
black and white image going back to our first levels adjustment layer I want to mention that
it's also possible to control the conversion using the black and the white level sliders it
can be difficult trying to get your head around how you're affecting the color image when you're
doing this but it's actually much easier than you think in the next video I explain exactly
what effect each of these sliders is having on the image thanks for watching today and if you
haven't already don't forget to subscribe I hope to see you again soon for another video