You can create interesting hybrid colorized black-and-white photos by allowing the colors in the original image to partially show through from lower layers.

The source image (Figure 10-48) has nice bright colors, but its monochrome cousin is a good photo too (Figure 10-49), even if it is a little dull. It results from a simple conversion using Photoshop’s Black & White command, as described in Black-and-White Conversion Using the Black & White Command. Figure 10-47 shows the resulting Layers panel. Before converting it, we tuned the image using Shadows/Highlights and sharpened it using Smart Sharpen.

Figure 10-47. Our Layers stack after optimization and black-and-white conversion

To produce the alternative version in Figure 10-51, we reduced the opacity of our Black & White adjustment layer to about 80% (Figure 10-50 and Figure 10-51).

Figure 10-48. A door in Soho (New York) is our source image

Figure 10-49. Photoshop monochrome version

Figure 10-50. We bring our color image to the fore by reducing the opacity of our Black & White adjustment layer.

Figure 10-51. Here, we reduced the opacity of the Black & White adjustment layer to 80%, allowing the original colors to shine through slightly.

As well as playing with opacity, you can experiment with other color/monochrome effects. We created an additional Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and used it to reduce the reds Saturation to “-71”. We placed this layer under the monochrome layer (Figure 10-53) to get the result in Figure 10-54.

Figure 10-52. Strong red reduction that mainly affects the bricks

This technique can be used to produce subtly colored images with their very own charm.

Figure 10-53. The Layers stack for the hybrid version of our image

Figure 10-54. The finished hybrid version of our door photo