Better Black and White

iPhoto’s B & W effect under the Effects tab does a good job of converting a color photo to black and white, but you can often improve on its efforts: after clicking B&W, adjust the Saturation, Temperature, and Tint sliders under the Adjust pane.

When you drag the color sliders after converting a photo to black and white, iPhoto blends the photo’s red, green, and blue color channels in different ways. To make a black-and-white photo appear richer, bump up the saturation after clicking the B & W effect. While you’re experimenting, drag the Temperature and Tint sliders to see how they alter the photo’s tonal values. (For you film fogies, this is the digital equivalent of exposing black-and-white film through color filters.) ...

Get iPhoto ’11: The Macintosh iLife Guide to using iPhoto with OS X Lion and iCloud now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.