Revisiting Black-and-White: Simple yet dramatic black-and-white conversions with iCorrect EditLab Pro 

Although known for its superb color correction capabilities, iCorrect EditLab Pro is also a very powerful tool for converting RGB color images to black-and-white.  The primary challenge when doing this conversion is controlling the manner in which different colors map onto a gray shade. It is not too surprising to realize that two easily distinguished, differently colored objects, may both be given the same gray shade after conversion, causing them to appear the same.

In this tip, we will see how EditLab Pro may be used to address these concerns. As a test subject, we will use an image of a boy wearing a multi-colored sweater. If we simply performed a Mode Change in Photoshop, the conversion produces the result seen in the middle image.  You can see that the blue and the gray parts of the sweater both convert to the same gray level. Likewise for the yellow and white parts. So the general appearance of the sweater pattern has suffered by this conversion.  The third image was achieved using iCorrect EditLab Pro.

Now let's see how easy it is to use EditLab Pro to do this conversion. It involves a few simple steps:

1. After launching EditLab Pro, use the first three tools to perform a normal color correction (i.e. neutral balance, black/white point, and overall brightness, contrast and saturation). Doing this will improve the tone range of the image prior to black-and-white conversion.

2. Select the fourth EditLab Pro tool: Hue Selective Edit. EditLab Pro's "SmartColor" feature will automatically set the six hue handles to useful hues in your image. Here we can see how these handle positions correspond to the colors found in our image:

3. Now, for each of the six hue handles, select the handle (on the inside of the hue ring) and set its Saturation to -50.

You will see that this causes all of the color to drain out of your image.

 4. Finally, visit each hue handle and adjust its Brightness to the desired level. You will see that as you change the Brightness for a particular hue handle, the gray shade for that color only changes in the image. (Use the Preview checkbox as needed to view the image in color.)

In our test image, we will set the sweater's blue color a bit brighter, and its yellow and green a bit darker, to provide better discrimination among the tones afterwards.

You can readily see the improvement over the normal Photoshop mode change: