Photography tips – Toned black and white photos

I think all of you can see that I like black and white photos, but sometimes I like to add a little bit of color to them.  Sometimes the b&w pictures are so stark, and I just want to warm them up a little bit.  Think sepia with a lighter touch.

First, do the normal processing to convert the photos to b&w by adding a black and white conversion layer or gradient map layer.

Next, add a hue/saturation adjustment layer (you can find it in the layers view under the circle that is half black/half white).  You can mess around with the dials a bit to see how they adjust the color.  Here’s a few examples, the first is the plain black and white.  I have the settings on the remaining pictures.

I really generally only use the first one that warms it up a bit, but as you can see from the current header on my blog, I used a blue saturation so it matched the colors of this theme.

This is a just a short tip and a little different way to convert a picture to b&w.

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Anna asked me if I would take a few pictures that others have taken and process them using my processing, then give the steps.  I would love to do that!  I know that it takes a lot of practice and research to figure out how to do it “just so”.  My methods aren’t necessarily the “right” way, just how I like to my pictures to look.  Just send me a picture at stacy at the-kraft-family dot com and I will choose the first couple to process and put up the steps next week.