Grainy Black And White Photo Tutorial

Today we are going to make an old film style grainy black and white photo using adjusments filters, noise filters and much more. We will look at the difference between different adjustment filters like ‘black and white’ and the saturation adjustment. Which one will we use? Well lets find that out!

Step 1:
Search for a nice picture. For this tutorial I will be using a photo of a beach (im living on Curacao at the moment so the beach is my life). I got this one from sxc.hu (a very good FREE stock site). Of course it would be nicer to take one that you made yourself.

Open it up in photoshop and name it original.

Step 2:
It will be a black and white project so thats what we will do first. Im going to show you the difference between some adjusment filters.

Black and white:
Press on the black and white circle so it opens up the slider for the adjustments.

Select the ‘Black & White’ filter. When you open it you see alot of black to white sliders, just like in the image below. Every slider will make a color in the picture more intense white or black. As you can see we are able to customize it. However there are no standard variables so you will need to play with it until you are satisfied. Ensure you make the focus point the most intense. In this image, I wanted the beach and the island at the back to be the most eye catching part of this photo.

Hue/saturation:
The hue/saturation filter is also an option for creating a black and white image, but you can’t customize it. If you use this option just push the saturation slider all the way to -100. Now you also have a grayscale image but when you do this the image becomes flat. So we won’t be using this for this tutorial. Using the method above will allow you to have much more control over the tones within your image.

Ok, now you should have a black and white image! time for the next step.

Step 3:
Lets finish the “photoshop” work by adding a curve adjustment filter. Again you need to play with it because its different with every image. Experiment with how the curves can change the tones within your picture. Make sure you don’t overdo this step, just some slight changes are good enough.

Step 4 (optional):
Well my image didn’t have a good focus so I blurred the image. When you do this, duplicate your original layer, and then on the new layer go to filter>blur>blur, and then erase the layer around the parts you wanted sharp. Now I have my focus points fixed. Because this step is optional I won’t be spending alot of time in it. So lets go to the next step.

Step 5:
Lets add some noise. Create a new layer (cmd/ctrl + Shift+ N) and click image > apply image. Now you have the blurred layer and the original on a new layer. You need to do this or you will be placing your noise on the wrong layer.

Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise…

Again don’t overdo this, a little bit noise is good enough. I put mine on 2,5%.

Well thats it, I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. I hope to see you for my next tutorial, Request are welcome!