Black and white photos sometimes look better than the colored ones. Converting colored photos to black and white is simple but there are few tricks that i’m going to show you to make them even better.

Black and white photo - before and after

The easiest way to convert your photo to black and white is to go Image > Mode > Grayscale. This is the result :

Not so good isn’t it? This is because it’s plain color -> black and white conversion so of course it looks bad. Instead of that use the following metod.

Step 1

Open your colored photo, press CRTL+U or go Image >Adjustments – Hue/Saturation and reduce saturation to -100.

Step 2

Duplicate the layer and name it “copy”. Now you have two black and white layers. Select the top one from the menu on the right and go Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast. Use the following settings :

Step 3

Set Blend Mode to Overlay.

I’m happy with the result so i will leave it like that. Following steps are optional.

Step 4

All photographs are different so this settings may not be perfect for your photo. Go Image > Adjustments > Curves and play around with the curve.

Step 5

If you think that your photo is too sharp or just want to add more “dreamy” effect use Gaussian Blur. Go Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and put the radius to 2px.

That’s it. Now you have a much better looking black and white photo.