Uber Actions
Photoshop Actions
Uber B&W Conversions contains 16 different methods for converting an image to black and white tones. As you view the samples below be sure to notice how reds, blues or greens change based on the conversion method.
Click here to view an online contact sheet of Uber B&W Conversions or click here for a pdf of samples.
Original
B&W Blue Channel won’t be used very often, but it uses the blue channel to create a black and white layer that may be useful for masking – turns blues in a color image to a light tone, however it makes skin look pretty bad. It can be used moderately for special effects like aging an image.
B&W Channel Mix 1 creates black and white tones similar in tonal value to the original color image
B&W Channel Mix 2 creates black and white tones with less contrast than Mix 1 above and makes reds appear lighter in tone
B&W Channel Mix Soft creates contrasty black and white tones with a softness added
B&W Color Mixer H&S is a conversion method that allows you to modify and view the gray tones while adjusting a color layer. You can target specific colors in an image. This works similar to the Black & White Adjustment layer in Photoshop, but with more subtlety
B&W Desaturate desaturates the colors in the image
B&W Gradient Map applies a black and white gradient to the image giving rich contrast
Green Channel uses the green channel resulting in light gray tones for the greens and yellows, reds result in dark tones
High Contrast creates a very high contrast black and white image
Infrared creates a black and white image similar to using black and white infrared film on people
Infrared Dark creates a black and white image similar to using black and white infrared film but darker than Infrared above
Luminous Lab one of the more popular black and white conversion methods by converting the image color space to Lab mode and then using the lightness channel for the conversion. Usually results in a fairly light image.
Luminous Lab Rich is the same as Luminous Lab above, but with more contrast and a Curves Adjustment layer that can be used with the layer mask to bring back detail
Red Channel creates soft almost glowing skin tones, eyes can go very dark, reds become light gray tones
Red Double similar to the Red Channel, but with more contrast
Red & Green Channel combines the red and green channel to create contrasty black and white tones
