How to Use Black & White Adjustments in Photoshop

Start With a 16-Bit File

If you have the raw file, use it. A 16-bit image carries far more information per color channel, and black and white conversion leans hard on that information – you get smoother gradations and much more room to push the sliders before anything breaks.

The Six Black and White Adjustment Sliders

Add the layer via Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Black and White, or from the adjustments icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. You get sliders for Reds, Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues and Magentas, each controlling how bright that color range renders in the final black and white. Skin lives in the reds and yellows; sky lives in the cyans and blues. Brighten your subject while darkening the sky and you create separation and drama that the color file never had. Sliders for colors your image does not contain simply do nothing.

Black and White Adjustment Tint

Check the Tint box on the Black and White adjustment to add color back in. Click the swatch and choose your color – toward the left of the picker is less saturated, toward the right is more. A desaturated orange gives you a classic sepia; anything else is fair game for a stylized split.

Black and White Adjustment Presets

The preset menu includes built-in looks such as Infrared and Maximum Black, which are good starting points. Once you have a conversion you like, open the panel menu and choose Save Black and White Preset. Load it on any other image and you get an identical treatment – the fastest way to keep a set of photos consistent.

The On-Image Hand

Click the Black and White adjustment’s hand icon, then click and drag directly on any part of the photo. Photoshop reads the color under your cursor and adjusts that slider for you – drag left to darken, right to brighten. It does not know a person from a sky, but it does know blue from yellow, and that is usually all you need.

Set the Black and White Adjustment to Luminosity Mode

Here is the trick worth remembering. Leave the layer in Normal mode and your image goes black and white. Change the blend mode to Luminosity and the photo stays in full color – but the six sliders still control the brightness of each color range. You cannot change a hue that way (that is Hue/Saturation’s job), but you can brighten or darken any color independently in a color photograph, which is a very powerful and often overlooked technique. Lowering the layer opacity in Normal mode gives you a partially desaturated look.

Black and White Adjustment Quick Reference

• Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Black and White
• Skin = Reds and Yellows; sky = Cyans and Blues
• Tint checkbox – add a sepia or split tone
• Panel menu > Save Black and White Preset – reuse a conversion
• Hand icon – click and drag on the image to adjust a color
• Luminosity blend mode – control color brightness without going black and white