Black, White and Sepia

Sometimes you have a perfectly captured photo, only to discover that there may be a clash of color within the photo, or with one of the papers or embellishments you wish to scrap with. Or, you may have a photo that you wish to give a more mellow, vintage tone to, especially for heritage layouts. What to do? Well you can easily change a color photo to black and white or a vintage tone like sepia. This can be dealt with in several ways in Photoshop. Let's cover the black and white option first as the sepia method follows on from that!

For those of you with Photoshop Elements you can use your Enhance Menu and Convert to Black and White, or use the Adjust Color option and move the Level Dialog black and white sliders around until you obtain that perfect balance for your photo. With Photoshop CS and upwards these options are on the Image Menu, where you can convert to black and white through the Desaturation option or use the Channel Mixer.

However, the method I will cover here is done through the use of adjustment layers. This option produces a more pleasing result with a wider variety of tones and once you become familiar with the finer points of the slides to adjust the hue and saturation, it is also very quick.

I have opened up the photo I want to alter (be sure to work on a copy of your precious photos!) and added an adjustment layer. You will find this either in the Layer Menu or at the bottom of the Layer Palette. Make sure you choose the Hue and Saturation option and simply click OK as in the screenprint.

The next stage is to change the blend mode of the adjustment layer by using the blend mode selection at the top of the Layer Palette. Choose Color.

You won't see a difference yet, but this is the layer that will bring out the subtleties of the tones in the black and white.