Absolute Beginner's Guide to Digital Photography

information while resulting in a black-and-white image. The file will be larger, but

you can then colorize the image in different channels—a more advanced technique

to try on your own.

Another option for Photoshop and more advanced image-editing software users is to

convert the image from RGB to LAB mode and then remove the A and B channels,

leaving only the Luminance channel. This often produces superior results to the

bland Image, Mode, Grayscale method. In LAB mode, brightness information is sep-

arated completely from color information. If your imaging-editing application has

LAB mode capabilities, follow these simple steps to create a great-looking black-and-

white image from color:

1. Open a color image and choose File, Save As. Save the image with a new
   name to preserve the original.


2. Choose Image, Mode, LAB.


3. Open the Channels window by choosing Window, Channels or by clicking on
   the Channels tab.


4. Click on the A channel and then drag it into the Trash (delete it). Click Yes
   when Photoshop asks whether you would like to flatten layers.


5. Delete the second channel (called Alpha 2) that results. You should be left
   with only one channel called Alpha 1.


6. Convert the image to grayscale by choosing Image, Mode, Grayscale (see
   Figure 22.4). You now can save the image as a JPEG or TIFF file.

CHAPTER 22 THE PORTRAIT 329

FIGURE 22.4
On the left,
image was con-
verted using
Image, Mode,
Grayscale; the
right image was
converted using
LAB mode.
Notice the clar-
ity and contrast
in the right
image.