Creative black and white conversions

Convert your shots to mono in Photoshop for a variety of stylish results, with James Abbott

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There are several highly effective ways to convert photos to mono, but there are also many ways in which you can make refined and creative adjustments -whether that's simply by the way individual colour channels convert to greyscale or by incorporating Filters and Adjustment Layers into the overall effect. What initially may appear to be a simple technique can quickly become incredibly creative. The key to success, as is often the case with Photoshop, is to work with Layers.

Although this may sound complicated, the reality is that all of the techniques we'll cover are easy to apply and look much more stylish than a basic conversion with no manual intervention. These techniques also represent just the tip of what's possible, but will hopefully inspire you to experiment yourself to find new approaches that work for you. Also, you can take elements from the different techniques to use as a starting point.