Recently I was looking through my collection of images for some that would make good Black and White prints. I found one that was a nice beach scene at sunrise on Gwynns Island on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Mathews County, Virginia. Most of my conversions of color images are done using a Black and White layer in Photoshop. That works well because it’s possible to manipulate the image to come up with nice contrast by tweaking the red, blue, yellow, cyan and magenta sliders. I did that to my beach image, but wasn’t really satisfied. I decided to add a Selective Color layer and play with the whites, neutrals and blacks like I do frequently in color images. It came to me that if one is working with a color image with a black and white layer, and added a selective color layer, one could then manipulate the cyan, yellow and magenta colors of the white selection to vary the gray tones of the highlights. By the same token, manipulating the same colors of the neutrals and blacks would allow the middle gray and black tones to be modified. To my surprise, it actually worked, and very well I might add.  The results are shown here.

The Gwynns Island Color Image

The image after adding the B&W layer and tweaking the colors for best effect.

The image showing the addition of the SC layer before any adjustments.

The following screen shots show the adjustments made to each of the white, neutral and black main selections of the selective color layer dialog, but not the effects that were obtained by each. You will have to try it on your own image to see the incremental effects.

Select "whites" from the menu and adjust the cyan, yellow and magenta sliders for best highlights.

Note that the SC layer is above the B&W layer in the stack. It must be moved under the B&W layer to obtain the desired results.

Leave the image in RGB mode or this technique will not work.

Select "neutrals" from the drop down menu and adjust the 3 color sliders to control the neutral tones.

Select the "blacks" from the drop-down menu and adjust the 3 color sliders to control the dark tones. These are much more sensitive to slight slider movements.

The final image after adjusting the whites, neutrals and blacks. It is possible to go back to the B&W layer and further tweak the sliders there.

Compare the final image above with this one using only the B&W layer.

After trying this technique on several images I have concluded that it works differently on some images than others. Generally the more different colors in the color image the more control you will have of the gray tones. It is also possible to tweak the red, yellow, cyan and other colors the same way as with the whites, neutrals and blacks. In some cases this will have no effect, and in others there will be an effect. You just have to try it and find out what works for a specific image.