Beemouse Laboratories

Katie, 2008

This is the right eye of my friend Katie. She has beautiful blue eyes, but I just wanted this particular photo to be black and white.

I was going to leave my post at that, but I thought I’d explain, for once, how I post-process. I do most of my black and white post-processing this way:

First I add a black and white adjustment layer:

If you bump up the red channel, it’s going to give skin that milky appearance you see above. Be judicious or your subjects will look like they are from a wax museum. Of course, if that’s what you’re going for, cool. I could have left the red slider lower and fiddled with the yellow slider and this would’ve left a lot more texture in Katie’s skin. However, since part of the photo was already blown out (bridge of nose, cheek areas), and I was shooting with a point and shoot anyway, I decided to go for the milky-goddess-skin look.

Then I finish off with a curves adjustment layer:

Of course, I am picky and individually process almost all of my photos, so the adjustment layers look different for every photo (it’s okay, everyone, laugh at the anal retentive fussy person who won’t just give in and use Aperture)… In any case, the next time you want to play with black and white post-processing, you can try using a black and white adjustment layer, if you didn’t already know that the possibility exists. You can do craaaaaaaaazy things with those six color channels. For example, if you reduce the blue and cyan levels enough, you can usually make any light-skinned person look like they are at least 20 years older! Um… I usually reserve this treatment for self-portraits, such as the following, in which a black and white adjustment layer is used as a blending layer:

My mysterious disease #9, 2008

No, for real though, pushing and pulling on those sliders will help you bring out different details in your photograph. Pay close attention and you will be amaaaaaazed…