>> iPhoto '11 or later
>> a photo to work with
>> 15 Minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Black and white is making a bit of a comeback, and you can create some surprisingly effective black and white images using the adjustment tools and effects in iPhoto. These might look a little basic at first, but the interaction between these two sets of controls is very interesting.
In most image editors, effects are applied once and irreversibly; in iPhoto they remain "live" so that you can keep changing them as you go along. Some effects are simply "on" or "off", but others come in different strengths. Best of all, these effects act cumulatively, interacting with each other in ways which offer a lot more variety and control than you might expect.
The B&W effect is a good example. iPhoto doesn’t let you change an image from color to greyscale in the same way that Photoshop does, and your first instinct then might simply be to reduce the Saturation value to zero in the Adjust panel. This doesn’t work, though, because it simply reduces color rather than removing it. But using the B&W effect doesn’t just produce a black and white conversion because the image retains its full color data. You can use the Temperature and Tint sliders in the Adjust panel to modify the way different colors are converted into shades of gray.
In fact all the adjustment tools remain active. The Contrast slider can make black and white shots more intense and dramatic, while the Highlights and Shadows sliders give you some control over how the darker and lighter parts of the picture are reproduced.
It’s the way the B&W effect interacts with the others that’s most interesting, though. You can create black and white "‘toning" effects, delivering more controllable results than the standard Sepia effect.
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