Sunday Helper - Turning a color image to b/w

Welcome to our little sunday helper. This week I'll show you a great way, to turn your color pics into black and white ones using the Photoshop plug-in filter Virtual Photographer. You can download a free copy here http://www.optikvervelabs.com/ and install it by following the instructions. Now you can start!

First open your pic you want to use and duplicate your layer, don’t work on the original, if you make a mistake and there a to many steps you made, you can’t go back and have to start your hole work. Working with layers gives you more possibilities and if one layer isn’t good, you can delete the bad one.

Now go to Virtual Photographer. You can find it under your filter section of photoshop:

There are many presets, you can use but you can also create your own effects and save them as a preset.

Here is what I made with my pic:

Tab Film:

• Film 1, left slider at +1, right slider at +18
• Film Speed at 25 ASA
• Adjust Grain: -10

Tab Style:

• Subtle
• Effect: Soft at 50
• B/W unchecked

Now click on process. This is what I got:

Copy your adjusted layer (not the background layer) and use your Virtual Photographer again: Go to your main tab and use the "dramatic" preset as shown below

Now go to your layer palette and change the opacity of your top layer (the b/w one) to 75 %. At your second layer change the blend mode to soft light and here is, what I got:

Isn't this a very easy way to get a wonderful pic? Have a great sunday!