Sometimes black and white images just don't have enough contrast and drama. :-) I by no means am a Photoshop guru, but I do have my way of doing things that seem to work pretty well. Here below is how I took this sneak peek shot from Nicki's bridal and created the more contrasted b/w image.
1. The first image is the original shot, straight out of my camera, open in Photoshop CS3.
2. The second image is the same shot, desaturated. This is just for you to see the difference in the contrasting b/w versus the plain ol' PS desaturation. Since I am not a huge fan of PS's b/w, I have created my own version with a little more warmth (check out the last photo to see the difference in color).
3. Go back to the original image. Duplicate the layer, (if you are not sure what this means, do a little bit of research and play around with it. Layers will rock your world!) and play with curves to get a more high contrast image. This takes some practice and time to figure out what works and what doesn't. Once you get the hang of it, you can create your own action so you don't have to spend 5 minutes every time tweaking curves. (If you don't know what actions are, check out a tutorial online. This is a huge time saver!)
4. Then duplicate the layer, desaturate, and play with curves to get a warmer black/white image. Up the levels slightly of yellow, red, and magenta. You can also get a much prettier sepia color than the PS default action, which in my opinion is kind of yucky.
There are a million and one ways to do just about everything in PS, but this is the way that I work, so I thought I would share. :-) If anyone knows of a good online tutorial for layers or actions in PS, please comment and leave a link!
