and then she snapped: show {off} your shot

Hi!

Thanks for coming back!

My favorite shot from this past week is from Ewa over at Mom Photographer . I just love this shot. I think it's very different. But in a good way, you know?

Congratulations, Ewa, help yourself to my awesome winner badge:

Now let's move on to week number 19!
I love black and white shots, but I never actually shoot in black and white. I suppose I could, but it's so easy to edit later that I honestly never even think to. This week I want to share a few of the many many ways to convert a color shot into black and white.

The first and maybe most obvious is to click on enhance>convert to black and white. Yeah, that's all you have to do! Once the dialog box opens though, you can tweak to your heart's desire. There are different styles you can choose from: portrait, scenic landscape, urban/snapshots, or the one I choose here is called newspaper. Then you can tweak further by adjusting the slider bars to adjust the intensity of red, green or blue, or adjust the contrast.

Another way to convert to black and white is to create a black and white gradiant map adjustment layer. I like to use this method when I want to let some of the color peek through. So after I create the layer I turn down it's opacity. On this one I used about 50% opacity.

A third way (and another of my favorites) is to simply run an action. I have gotten all of my actions for free, mostly from the Pioneer Woman or the Coffeeshop Blog.
This one is the Pioneer Woman's Heartland action.

And this one is Coffeeshop Blogs Classic B&W with the "high key" layer turned on.

Look at how the different methods can have such different outcomes. All black and white, but none of them are the same!

Now it's your turn! What tip can you share this week?

~~Rules~~ Guidelines:

~One photo per person, and the photo must be taken by you.

~Blog about your photo and share something about how you took the photo, or how you edited it. (Please don't skip this part, because it is so fun to be able to learn from one another).

~Add my button (below) to your blog post...(text links are ok too, but please do link back to me ~~or I might cry~~)

~Link up to your blog or Flickr page, (but please link up to your specific post and not just your blog homepage...if I can't tell what post you are linking up I will have to delete the entry).

If you have ANY questions, feel free to email me.

I can't wait to see what you come up with this week!