I searched for this wonderful tutorial by Heidi Brand the other day. I love the look of black and white and sepia pictures. I have been unhappy with the short cut options on my photo editing software and remembered the following tutorial:

Black and White Conversion in PSE ~ Heidi Brand

1. Open Image, and using the menu across the top, select IMAGE, this will give you a drop down menu where you will select MODE, that will bring up another drop down menu where you will select GRAYSCALE. It will then ask you if you would like to discard the colour information, hit OKAY. You should now see your image in black and white.

Now go back to IMAGE>MODE>and select RGB and hit okay.
2. This is a little flat, so you can now add some contrast to the picture. ENHANCE>AUTO CONTRAST or ENHANCE>ADJUST BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST, and play around with the brightness and contrast sliders so you see somthing that you like. In my example I have lightened it some and increased the contrast a little.

3. Now this is where it gets a little more complicated. From the menus at the top go to LAYER and select DUPLICATE LAYER from the drop down menu.
Now you need to go into the layers pallete, where you will see a box with a drop down menu. Currently NORMAL should be in the box. Click on the arrow down button beside Normal and the drop down menu will appear.

Now you want to select SCREEN, and adjust the opacity to taste. The box to the right where it says 100%. If you click arrow with the box saying 100, it will give you a slider to move so you can adjust to taste. I did a screen layer at 70%.
When you are happy with that go to LAYERS>FLATTEN IMAGE

4. Now to make the tones in the picture pop a little more, you need to go back to LAYERS>DUPLICATE LAYER and select okay. Now in the layers mode window, which should say normal, click on the arrow for the drop down menu and select the soft light layer, and go to the right and adjust the opacity to your liking. Once you are happy with what you have flatten the image LAYERS>FLATTEN IMAGE I used a soft light layer at 40%.

5. You can repeat the same instructions as in number 4 except using a hard light layer instead of soft light. Remember to adjust opacity to taste. I did a hard light layer at 50%, a little extreme but I wanted you to be able to see a difference.

You can repeat these layers as many times as you like. Just remember to flatten and save the image under a different file name when you are happy with it.
Also if you would like to add a bit of a warm brown tone to the conversion, once you have flattened the image hit CONTROL “U” check the colourize box and play with the hue and saturation sliders till you see something that you like, then hit okay.

^^^ I also wanted to let you know that these different layers, screen, hard light, soft light also work great to lighten and bring out different tones in colour pictures ^^^

I hope you enjoy this wonderful tutorial from CCAS gal Heidi Brand.

~Tara~

It is Monday and therefore time for my Layout of the Week. I always have a such a hard time with this task because there are so many talented “Creative Chicks” here at CCAS!!

I am sure everyone will agree with this week’s choice. I was automatically drawn to this layout from the first time I saw it. It is by Jess and it is entitled, “Life is Good”. I love the black and white with the pink details. The splashes of paint really add texture and make this layout pop. The pics are perfect and I adore the Daisy D’s rubon title. Great job Jess!!

When you get some time… pop on over to the gallery and see some of the amazing layouts in there.

~Tara~