If you’ve followed along with my tutorial, Basic B&W - The Next Step you’ve learned that color is pretty important to a photograph. If you haven’t read it, or forgotten, now would be a good chance to go back and review. In this lesson we are going to learn to make better use of the colors of our b/w photographs to help us create better tones and/or a different feeling all together using a channel mixer.

We will first start by opening a photograph and creating a duplicate layer.

“Layer” > “Duplicate Layer”

In the layers palette double click and change the name to something you like.

I chose to use this photo. Feel free to use it while working on the tutorial to help you along, or perhaps you have one in mind already.

• TIP: Duplicating the background layer is a good habit, even if it is not needed. This insures us that no matter what we do to our photograph, either intentionally or by mistake, we always have the original on the bottom to fall back on.

Instead of adding a layer of 50% gray as we did in my first tutorial, we will use a channel mixer instead.

“Layer” > “New Adjustments Layer” > “Channel Mixer”

Create a name for it in the popup window and hit ok.

The next window that will appear will be the Channel Mixer. It is also located in the layers palette if you need to go back to it later after hitting ok.

On the bottom, Make sure that monochrome is selected with a check mark.

First, Lets talk about monochrome. Monochrome is 2 distinct colors, Black, and white, hence mono and chrome. If you have done the same picture in both desaturation and also my other method, you will clearly see a difference in this new method. From my new diagram, you can see that reds-yellows-whites, and magentas are white… everything else is black.

As default you may have noticed that the red is already set at 100% and asking yourself why this is.

Well, in terms of monochromes, it’s just easier to use one color as a default, that is, keeping to the all white or black in color*. We can think of this in terms of exposure. If you slide the red to zero, you see nothing but black. If you then move the green slider to 100% you will notice that we can see our photo again but it’s a different monochrome. Now it is yellows and greens that are mostly white. You can do this again but with blues, and yet another monochrome exists.

We don’t even have to stick with a true monochrome theme. By totaling all 3 channels to equal 100% our ‘exposure’ will be the same but with much different tones in color*.

• Note I say “in color” because when we are changing tones in the channel mixer, we are not changing any values of blacks, grays and whites, unless you are also adjusting the constant or not sticking to the 100% theme.

We can even get the same effect of the 50% gray by sliding red to 30%, Green to 60% and blue to 10% totaling 100% This small example also shows us just how powerful the Channel Mixer is (and no, it wasn’t magic, it took me quite some time to figure out the right values).

The idea in contrast to this however is not to be overly concerned with totaling 100%. This is only good way to estimate what you are looking for in your photograph. It was also a great way to help you understand what was going on. Instead, examine your photograph, see what pops, and get the results you like.

Lets take it a step farther and think about what we are actually capable of doing with what we have learned. Lets say for instance that we want to exploit those beautiful signs. They are mostly yellow. I also want to darken blues, dampen reds, and brighten greens.

We understand that lowering the ‘exposure’ of reds will give us darker tones in reds.
We also know lowering the ‘ exposure’ of blues will give us darker tones in blues.
We know that raising the ‘exposure’ of greens will give us brighter tones in greens.

This is a good enough start, but what about yellows? Yellows are actually a combination
of the red and green channel so we may have to tweak a little between the 2 colors to get what we are looking for.

Since we know we will want darker reds, lets go ahead and drop it to 50%.

We also will want brighter greens. Lets push it up 50%.

It’s not bad at all and we haven’t yet touched the blue channel. However my aim is to fully exploit those signs. And I also want a lot darker blues. So I pushed the greens farther all the way up to 100% to help brighten the signs even more. Then I took the blue down to -100%. I like this very much! Notice however the total between all three channels is not 100%. It actually comes out being a lot lower. 50%: 50 + 100 - 100 = 50

When you are happy with the photo, hit ok and save it. If later you want to change it, the channel mixer is in the layers palette. just double click the layer and play around with it some more.

Note that I only used the 100% ‘exposure’ as a starting reference. Sometimes it is all you need. Other times, as in this sample, you are looking to be more creative.

Breath deeply, grab yourself a drink and relax. If you made it this far you’ve come a long way! Experiment with your own photos and by all means have fun! Maybe you don’t like the change to my photograph and can find something you like better. You will only get better by doing.

Now we are getting into some serious b&w!