Killer Black and White Photos

I’ve loved black and white photos for a long time. They’re so classic, timeless, and striking that I can’t get enough. It’s no surprise then that there’s usually always a handful of black and whites from each shoot I do.
I’m just sitting around thinking about getting some pictures printed soon and decided I wanted to share my concoction for the perfect (in my opinion) black and white photo “action”. Two words: Pioneer Woman.

If you don’t have both sets of the Pioneer Woman’s photoshop actions, what are you waiting for?! Get them from Ree here!
So, the How To based on my little-bit-of-photoshop-knowledge using my sweet friend Chelsy's daughter Abbi as my model:

My starting picture is Straight Out of the Camera or SOOC.

In Photoshop Elements 9, I go to Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Brightness/Contrast.

Bump up the Brightness until it’s lightened everything up but not blown it out. Mine is at 42 in this case.

Now, click the Pioneer Action “Boost”.

After Boost application.

Then, click the “Sharpen This” action. I run the circle over the eyes to sharpen and then bump the opacity (on the right) down to usually around 60% so the eyes don’t look so glassy.

Then I hit the “Flatten” action which will flatten all the layers and allow me to apply the black and white action.

Then hit the “BW Beauty” action.

Then I go back to Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Brightness/Contrast. If I want my blacks darker and my whites lighter, I’ll bump up the contrast.


In this case, Abbi is a little blown out so I bumped down the Brightness and bumped up the contrast until I got the look I wanted.
And that’s it!


Now, for your viewing pleasure, here’s some more killer black and whites…Shout out to Chelsy, Erin, Brittney, Jessica & Samantha for making such cute babies and for letting me photograph them! (Several are repeats)