Digital cameras are excellent. But, composition of a nice black and white photo needs some work in Photoshop or in Gimp. The easiest way to make a simple black and white photo is to strip color information from the picture by converting to greyscale.

Converting to greyscale is really quick, but to catch the atmosphere of the photo, it needs a lot more. Greyscale conversion produces photos, which look unattractive and they lose their deepness. They look very flat and the contrast is lost.

But, Gimp and Photoshop offer solution for the need to convert images.

1. The solution is about creation of the new adjustment layer and selecting Channel Mixer. When the channel mixer is selected you can start to play with the photo to adjust colors over the whole image. Or you can make a selection and you can adjust just the part of the photo.
2. In channel mixer, you just select the output in monochrome and you will immediately see the changes in the photo.
3. You need to play with the values in red, green and blue channel to see the changes in the photo and balancing the best option for you.

You just need to make sure, the sum of all the three values does not go over 100%. It is up to you, Gimp or Photoshop will not protest.

The conversion works the same way in Gimp and Photoshop. It is really up to you, which application you choose, but Gimp has one big advantage – it is provided for free. You can download Gimp here – there is a direct link for Mac OS X version.

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