High Key Black and White Technique
Creating high key effects in Photoshop are really easy once you have the basic concept under your belt. I am going to show you a basic technique here that yields really impressive results in creating a high key black and white image.
Tutorial image
Step 1:
First thing we are going to do is turn our image black and white via the image adjustments menu which can be found under Image>Adjustments>Black and White. Play with the settings if you want to, I just accepted the default. Next we want to go to Select>Color Range and in the dialogue box select the highlights option from the drop down menu at the top.
Step 2:
Select the range by hitting OK and copy the selection to a new layer using ctrl + J. Name the layer highlights and with this layer selected go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and chhose a setting of around 10 pixels. Set the layers blend mode to screen and you should have something like below.
Step 3:
Now duplicate the highlights layer twice and change the opacity of the middle highlight layer to 50-60% and the top layer to around 20-30%. Blur the top layer again using the Gaussian Blur filter and this time use a setting of around 50%. Last thing we need to do is add in a Levels adjustment layer above the background layer.and really bring up the dark areas. To do this click on the half black/white circle at the foot of the layers palette and choose levels from the pop up menu. In the dialogue box we want to drag the left handle under the histogram over to increase the level of black in the image, a setting of around 60 looks great.
You should now have a nice high key effect black and white image with real mood in the dark areas and glowing popping white highlights.
Posted on September 24th, 2008 under Photoshop tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
