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There are a lot of ways to come up with black and white pictures nowadys. But if you alredy shut the picture in colored and wantto convert it into a black and white picture, then there are two ways that I know of to instantly convert them to black and white in Photoshop. First is by desaturating the photo (image>adjustments>desaturate). Second is by converting your image to grayscale (image>mode>grayscale). Most of us use either of these two method to convert our colored pictures to black and white. However, professionals have another way of converting colored photos to black and white in Photoshop without the help of any third party plugin–through the use of Photoshop’s Channel Mixer. This technique works the same way as putting color filters over the lens to shoot black and white using a film camera. To learn more about this technique, read the short tutorial below. At the end of this post, we will also compare how the outcome of this conversion process differs from the two basic conversion techniques–the grayscale and desaturate options.

Convert Black & White Pictures – FIRST STEP: Open the Channel Palette
Go to the channels palette. If it is not opened yet, click on Window>Channels

Convert Black & White Pictures – SECOND STEP: Check the channels
Go to the channels palette and click each of the individual channel by hitting the eye icon to hide or show each channel. Check how tones are represented in each channel. [Picture below shows tones in Green channel.] Click the eye icon opposite the RGB channel to return to color.

Convert Black & White Pictures -THIRD STEP: Add a Channel Mixer Layer
Click Add Adjustment or Fill Layer at the bottom of your Layers palette and select Channel Mixer.

Next, make sure that the Monochrome box at the bottom of the dialogue that appears is checked or activated. The black and white image that appears in this dialogue box is defaulted at 100% Red and zero in the Green and Blue  channels. Using this combination is like activating the Red channel only in the channels palette. Try lowering down the numeric values for the Red channel while increasing the numeric values for other Channel using the sliders. Important to remember though to make sure that any combination entered in the three channels must add up to 100%. For example, 25% Red, 15% Green and 60% blue. Try to play around with the Channel sliders until you get the combination that you think works best for your image. Hit OK.

Convert Black & White Pictures-FOURTH STEP:Add levels adjustment
Black and white pictures usually look better with higher contrast. So unless of course you want to achieve an image with fairly muted tones, you need to increase contrast of your picture. We will do that by adding a Levels adjustment layer. Click the icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and choose Levels [as shown in the image below].

Convert Black & White Pictures-FIFTH STEP: Set the black point.
To set the black point, you need to hold down Ctrl+Alt (Windows) or Alt+Option (Mac) and click your mouse on the black slider and hold. Doing so will show the threshold clipping for shadows. If you only see white on your screen, you need to drag the slider rightwards until some black specks starts to appear. Move back a a little bit and release. Do not hit the OK button yet as we need to set the white point also.

Convert Black & White Pictures-SIXTH STEP: Set the White point
With the Levels dialogue box still open, hold down Ctrl+Alt (Windows) or Alt+Option (Mac) and click on the white slider this time and hold. A black screen should appear. However, if you already see some white specks on the black background, you may now release the button. If there is none, then drag the white slider towards the left until you see some white specks on the screen. Move back a little bit and then release. Don’t hit the OK button just yet.

Convert Black & White Pictures- SEVENTH STEP: Alter the gamma
In the same window/dialogue box, lighten or or darken the overall image if needed by dragging the middle gray slider. Now hit OK to close the dialogue box.

Convert Black & White Pictures – EIGHT STEP: Add contrast
Add more contrast to your photo by adding a Curves adjustment layer as shown below:

Next, use two points to plot a slight S curve to increase the contrast, pushing up highlights (top) and dropping down shadows (bottom) while keeping the midpoint stable. Increase the strength of the curve if necessary.

Final image in black and white

Resulting image using the command Image>Mode>Grayscale

Resulting image using the command Image>Adjustment>Desaturate

The original colored image used in this tutorial

I hope you enjoy this tutorial. Let me know of your comments or if you have a better and simplified technique in converting from color to black and white pictures.