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How to make that snap shot really look like something professional

Posted by Kath from Bendigo, Victoria, Australia • Published 29th April 2010 • See Kath's 2 projects »

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catarina n. favorited How To Create An Affect Black And White Image In Adobe Photoshop 28 Jul 18:12
Nora E. added How To Create An Affect Black And White Image In Adobe Photoshop to Photography Ideas 05 Apr 02:46

Step 1
This is my starting image. I opened this in photoshop, you can do this in any version of photoshop, but the version i'm using is adobe cs4
Step 2
The first i thing i did after opening the image in photoshop, was up the top i went to Image > Adjustments > desaturate. which just removes all the colour from your image and turns it black and white.
Step 3
Then you go to Image > Adjustments > Curves, this tool helps the exposure of the image, but in this case it gives more definite black and whites instead of the image being so grey.
Step 4
In this image you can see the before (just after it was desaturated) with the curves tool opened, and you can see how grey the image looks.
Step 5
On the side you can see i've moved the lines, you don't have to do it the same as I did, you're welcome to play around til the image suits your personal taste.
But in this instance this is how I did it.
And already you can see the dramatic change it has made to the image.
Step 6
This step is optional, this is just something i personally like to do with some of my black and white images.

Go to Filter > Distort > Lens Correction.
Step 7
Where the red line is where i played around, you can again like i said move this bar to what suits your personal taste, this tool gives a dark edge around your image, and makes the subject in the middle stand out more.
Step 8
This is what the image looks like with the dark edge.
Step 9
This is something I do with some of my images, Canon cameras can sometimes produce unsharp images, so I like to sharpen up my image a bit, So i went to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen
Step 10
Where the red circle is where i moved the bar, now I only did 2.0 do not do it to intense you want your photo to look as natural and unphotoshopped as you can.
Step 11
And my final image! A more effective and dramatic and non ametuer black and white, this is how the professionals do it :)