Vintage black & white
Explore monochrome techniques in Photoshop and apply realistic analogue effects to your images
The black and white darkroom was – and remains – a place of huge creative potential, where special e ects ranging from simple dodging and burning to complex composites and much more were possible. But keeping things simple, we’re going to focus on four basic black and white techniques that will give your photos a realistic vintage look.
To ensure that these techniques will work with any images, we’ll only use stock black and white conversion methods so that no colour channels are adjusted. The problem with this can be that a technique becomes specic to photos that contain those colours. Instead, we’ll use Adjustment Layers to take these basic mono conversions to their creative conclusion.
Some of the techniques can also be adjusted to provide a more unique result based on personal preference, so where other adjustments have been applied beyond black and white, you can experiment to discover your preferred result.
1 High ISO mono
With the Background Layer active, press Ctrl/Cmd+J to make a copy. Next, go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter and when the dialog opens, click on the B&W button to convert the image to black and white. Expand the Curve tab and select the Parametric Curve. Drag the Highlights slider to -50 and the Shadows slider to +50. Expand the E ects tab and set Grain to 65, Size to 45 and Roughness to 40. Click the OK button to close the dialog and apply the adjustments to the Layer.
2 Sepia toning
Click on the Create new ll or adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel, and select Black & White. When the dialog opens, close it straight away because we only need the default conversion, rather than a custom conversion where the individual colour channels are adjusted. Next, create a Photo Filter Adjustment Layer and, when the dialog opens, click on the Filter drop-down menus and select Sepia. Set the Density to 30 per cent, or another amount if you prefer.
3 Solarisation
Create a Black & White Adjustment Layer and close the dialog when it opens. Next, create a Levels Adjustment Layer and drag the black slider below the histogram to 15 to deepen the blacks. Left-click on the point in the top right corner and drag it down to the bottom right corner, then place a point in the centre of the horizontal curve and drag it up to the top. This will create an e ect similar to solarisation, which is a darkroombased light fogging technique.
4 High contrast matte
Create a Black & White Adjustment Layer and close the dialog when it opens. Now create a Curves Adjustment Layer and place a point 3/4 of the way up the curve and drag up and to the left, then place a point 1/4 of the way up and drag down and to the right
– this will boost contrast. Next, place a third point 1/8 of the way up the curve and then drag the bottom left corner point to the same vertical level. This will lift the shadows and give them and the darker tones a matte look.