xxv. tutorials - black and white

[fuuurs]

Okay, these are intended as guides and not strictly tutorials, but if anything is unclear let me know and I'll try to explain better. ♥

method one
If you want a black and white image with high contrast, true blacks and true whites, this is the method to go with.
I almost always start with a 100x100 canvas and immediately crop the image, but since this method of coloring produces dramatic shadows and lights that aren't easy to discern before the coloring process, I wait to crop until the very end. I generally start a new canvas with my image/cap and then resize the image to anywhere from 200-300 pixels in width (be sure to maintain the correct aspect ratio!). For this image, I went with 225x300.


(image taken from intwinpeaks)

Apply the default black and white gradient map. I prefer to use the b&w gradient map over the Black and White adjustment layer because the gradient map produces more dramatic results.


Obviously things are way too dark and need to be brightened up. I always start off with Levels because I find it to be the easiest to use without messing up image quality. Looking at the little graph, it's clear that this image can withstand some serious brightening.


Background on using levels to correct light levels:  The first little arrow (circled in blue and labeled "1") represents true blacks in the image, the middle arrow (circled in pink and lebeled "2") represents middle-ground (grays) and the last arrow (circled in green and labeled "3") represents true whites.  You slide the arrows along until the fit the graph better.  For example, the black line on the graph ends way before the 3rd arrow (meaning the whitest part of your image isn't even a true white).  If you slide it to where the line ends (illustrated by my purple arrow), your image will have true white in it (although it might only be 1 single pixel that is true white, so you might have to slide waaay past the line).
Dragging the white arrow up to the line on the graph didn't do much of anything, so I went along my merry way and slid the arrow until I was pleased with the amount of light in my image.


This washed out a few areas (like the papers on the table and his collar). If this happens to your image, just mask it out.


Sometimes I stop after Levels, but usually I can't stop myself and I hop right on over to Brightness/Contrast. I pretty much always up the brightness, and depending on the image I either leave contrast alone or I do terrible things with it. For this image, I decided I wanted to make things VERY dramatic and almost as if they were drawn images rather than real life. So I upped the brightness to 21 and the contrast to 86 (I don't have a method for choosing the numbers, I just sort of slide along until I find the "just right" point visually.)


And voila, your image is ready to be cropped/texturized/etc!


method two
This is probably the least time-consuming method I know of.
Start with your image (whatever size you prefer, I just went with a larger size to make things easier to see.)


(image from intwinpeaks)

Use the default black and white gradient map.


Instead of using other adjustment layers to fix lighting/contrast, we're going to do it directly in the gradient map by sliding the black box and the white box. There's no exact science to it, just slide until you are happy with how the image looks.


Which gives us this:


This method gives a nice natural result... usually at this point I just crop it down and throw a few textures at it.


method three
I always start by cropping to 100x100 with this method, since one of the filters doesn't work as well with large images.


(image from intwinpeaks)

Duplicate the base, and set it to screen (in order to brighten things up).


Apply the default black and white gradient map.


Duplicate the base again, and make it the top layer. Go to Filter → Distort → Diffuse Glow. You want the glow amount to be higher than the clear amount, so much so that everything looks hazy/smoky/washed out. For this icon, I used graininess (0), glow amount (15) and clear amount (3). This makes things a little dreamy and glowy.


Set it to soft light, and clip a default black and white gradient layer to it. This makes the shadows deeper.


Copy-merge everything (or stamp visible, whatever you prefer). Do this twice. To the first copy-merged layer, apply a 5.0 gaussian blur to it. Set this to soft light. Set the second to screen. This simply adds to the glow and makes the image bright enough.


From here you can keep fiddling with the lighting, or you could add some textures:


last thoughts 
Black and white icons typically need something extra (since there aren't pretty colors to keep us interested)...
→ Use textures.  I'll post texture recommendations for black and white icons in my upcoming texture guide.
→ Dramatic lighting!  Black and white is great because it really shows off contrast and differences.  Take advantage of this and really push things to the extreme.
→ Colored text really pops against a black and white image, so if you're afraid of text, now is the time to experiment!
note。
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