Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [170]
Figure 6.3 This shows examples of different Black & White adjustment presets applied to a color image.
Once you have created a Black & White adjustment setting that you would like to use again you can choose ‘Save Preset…’ from the Adjustments panel options menu (Figure 6.2). For example, I was able to save the slider settings shown here as a custom preset called ‘Red Contrast’.
Figure 6.2 Once you have found a Black & White adjustment setting that you would like to use again, you can choose ‘Save Black & White Preset…’ from the Adjustment panel options menu. The slider settings shown here were saved as a ‘Red Contrast’ preset. Saved presets can be accessed by mousing down on the presets menu at the top of the Adjustments panel (circled).
Split color toning with Color Balance
Although the Black & White adjustment contains a Tint option for coloring images, this can only apply a single color overlay adjustment and I have never really found it to be that useful. It is nice though to have the ability to apply a split tone coloring to a photograph and one of the best ways to do this is by using the Color Balance image adjustment. This is ideal for coloring RGB images that have been converted to monochrome using the Black & White adjustment method, mainly because the Color Balance controls are really quite intuitive and simple to use. If you want to colorize the shadows, click on the Shadows radio button and adjust the color settings, then go to the Midtones, make them a different color and so on. Note that it is best to apply these coloring effects with the adjustment layer set to the Color blend mode (see sidebar).
Color blend mode
You will notice that I suggest you use the Color blend mode when applying adjustment layers that are intended to color an image. The advantage of using the Color blend mode is that you are able to alter the color component of an image without affecting the luminosity. This is important if you wish to preserve as much of the tone levels information as possible.
1.
I started here with an RGB color image and converted it to monochrome using the Black & White image adjustment. I then added a Color Balance adjustment layer to colorize the RGB/monochrome image. To do this, I went to the Adjustment panel and selected the Color Balance adjustment. I first of all clicked on the Shadows button and adjusted the Red slider to apply a red color cast to the shadows.
2.
I then clicked on the Midtones button and adjusted the color sliders there to add a green/blue color balance to the midtones. You will notice that I had ‘Preserve Luminosity’ checked. This helped prevent the image tones from becoming clipped.
3.
Finally, I clicked on the Highlights button and added a yellow cast to the highlights. I also set the adjustment layer blending mode to ‘Color’, which helped preserve the image luminance information.
Curves adjustment split toning
The Color Balance method is reasonably versatile, but you can also colorize a photograph by using two Curves adjustment layers and taking advantage of the Layer Style blending options to create a more adaptable split tone coloring effect.
1.
To tone this image, I first added a Curves adjustment layer above the Black & White adjustment layer and applied a blue/cyan color adjustment to the photo.
2.
I then added a second Curves adjustment on top of the previous one and this time applied a sepia color adjustment.
3.
I made the first Curves layer active and double-clicked it to open the Layer Style dialog shown here. I then -clicked on the divider triangle in the ‘Blend If’ layer options. This enabled me to separate the two dividers (circled) to split them in two, which allowed me to control where the split occurred between these two adjustments.
4.
The advantage of this method is that you can adjust the layer opacity and Layer Style blending modes of each individual layer, which offers more flexibility when it comes to deciding how best