Conjure up monochrome magic
Create stunning black-and-white photos with Affinity Photo’s simple conversion tools
There’s more to a successful black-andwhite conversion than simply removing colour. If you want to take control of your black-and-white photos, you need to tailor your conversions to the image. Colour, even in its absence, is important for this control, because the best black-and-white conversion tools let you finetune the brightness of colours as you remove them.
Affinity Photo’s Black & White layer is one such tool. Much like a lens-mounted monochrome filter, it lets you control colour brightness so you can, for example, darken blues and lift greens so that a tree stands out against a blue sky. Simple and intuitive to use, it lets us craft finely nuanced mono conversions in seconds.
One of the benefits of converting to mono is how you can push the contrast more than might be acceptable in a colour image. You can do this either universally – using the Curves command (the most intuitive tool for boosting contrast in Affinity Photo) or selectively, by lightening and darkening areas with the Dodge and Burn tools. We’ll look at the tools and techniques you need for mono conversions here, and you’ll find a full walkthrough in the accompanying video. Find out more at affinity.serif.com/photo
1 B&W layer
One of the best ways to convert to black and white in Affinity Photo is the Black and White layer. Like all Adjustment Layers, it works by affecting those layers below it in the stack. It keeps our black-andwhite effect non-destructive and editable, and also gives us extra options to alter the monochrome effect, perhaps by painting a Layer Mask so that it works selectively over parts of the frame, or by altering the layer opacity.
2 Colour sliders
The six sliders within the Black & White Adjustment Layer let you control the luminance of each colour range as the image is converted to mono. This kind of control lets you make black-andwhites that are tailored to the contents and colours in your image. Here, by lifting the yellows, we can lighten the cheetah’s fur and the tree; then, by dropping the blues and cyans, we can darken the sky for added contrast.
3 Picker
This handy tool lets you drag left or right over parts of the image to adjust the brightness of individual colour ranges within the frame. It offers similar control to the colour sliders, but it’s often more intuitive and quicker to use, as you can quickly target and tweak luminance simply by dragging over areas and objects in the image. If you need to reset a colour range to its default, double-click the slider in the Black & White settings.
4 Curves for contrast
At first, black-and-white conversions can look rather flat. You can add muchneeded punch with a Curves Adjustment Layer. Plot an S-shaped curve line by dragging one point upwards near the top of the diagonal line to lift the highlights, and another downwards near the bottom to anchor the shadows. The steeper the S-shape is, the greater the contrast.
5 Dodge and Burn tools
The Dodge and Burn tools go hand in hand with black-and-white conversions. They let you lighten (dodge) or darken (burn) areas by painting over the image. You can target shadows, midtones or highlights. It’s best to work on a duplicate of your original layer to keep things non-destructive. Like most painting tools, you can use the number keys 1-9 to set a strength for the tool.
6 Presets
If you come up with a black-and-white look that you like, why not save it as a preset? Simply click this button, choose a name and click Save. Then, while you’re editing another image, you can go to the Adjustment Panel (View > Studio > Adjustment) and you’ll find your preset within the Black & White tab here. If the effect needs tweaking, simply go to the Black & White settings.