High Contrast; How-To Add Graphic Appeal To Your Images

If you want to heighten the impact of your black and white or monochrome images, consider taking them higher—to higher contrast, that is. A number of filters and adjustments found in Photoshop CS3, Elements 6, and earlier versions present you with a wide range of options to simulate artistic brush effects, darkroom procedures, and printing techniques. With these, you can transform your image to look like an artwork created in a traditional art medium, or add graphic effects such as those seen on book covers, CD packaging, and movie posters.

To get a black and white photo, you can shoot in Black and White or a Monochrome mode if your camera offers those options. Or, convert any of your color digital files to black and white in Photoshop by choosing Image>Mode>Grayscale. If you have CS3, which I used for these examples, select Image>Adjustments>Black & White. In the Preset menu at the top, try all the drop-down options such as red, green, and yellow filters. Or adjust each color’s conversion using the sliders. If you have CS2, try Image>Adjustments>Channel Mixer.

The Filter Gallery
1. I wanted to add a high-contrast graphic look to my photograph of a narcissus.

2. Choose Filter>Artistic>Poster Edges to bring up this Filter Gallery dialog box. At the bottom of the window in the left panel, you can choose the preview magnification as a percentage or to “fit in view,” shown here. I recommend looking at the preview both at “fit in view,” so you can see the overall look, and at 100 percent to check details. In the center of the dialog box are folders representing about half of Photoshop’s filters grouped in categories such as Artistic, Sketch, Stylize, and Texture.

In the top right-hand panel of the Filter Gallery box, you’ll find sliders to adjust the effect you have chosen. Experiment with these settings and watch as the changes are redrawn in the preview window in the left panel. Drag inside the preview with the hand tool to move to different parts of an enlarged image.

Below the settings you’ll see a sort of stripped down layers palette where you can apply more than one filter. However, I don’t recommend it. You’re better off using the real layers palette where you can change Blend modes, vary the opacity of each layer, add masks, and so on. Once you’ve decided on the filter settings most appropriate to your photo, click the OK button at the top right to apply them.
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Posterization
3. Applying the Poster Edges default settings of Edge thickness 5, Edge intensity 1, and Posterization 2, produced the pleasing result seen here. The flower is surrounded by a dark outline and stippled as if it had been hand-drawn with pen and ink.

Sometimes an applied filter effect looks good but is too dark or too light. If this is the case, simply add a curves or levels adjustment layer to lighten or darken the filter rendering.
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Portrait, High-Contrast Style
4. Starting with this portrait of Jamie, I wanted to transform it with a posterized look.
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5. Choosing Image>Adjustments> Posterize brings up this Posterize dialog box. The only control is the number of levels which can range from 2 to 255. The 2 levels represents pure black and pure white, usually with too much detail missing. Experiment with setting of 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 to 10 or 20 for the most effective results.
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6. Here I pumped the default Levels setting of 4 up to 6, for six shades—black, white and four shades of gray. The posterized portrait creates an abstracted interpretation, but still maintains plenty of detail in important areas.
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Graphic Outlines
7. As the starting point for a minimalist outline effect, I chose this shot of the skyline of Central Park West in New York City.
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8. Selecting Filter>Stylize>Glowing Edges brought up the Filter Gallery dialog box. Experimenting with the settings, I preferred the result at Edge width 5, Edge brightness 8, and Smoothness 5.
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9. Applying the Glowing Edges filter rendered this highly stylized view, bringing out increased detail within the buildings and outlining them with a wide white line, like a neon sign. It looks a bit like the backdrop for a 1930s movie.
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10. For our final foray into high contrast, I chose a shot of a subway train in a station. The architectural grid of the ceiling provides plenty of foundation for high-contrast effects.
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The Litho Look
11. My goal was to transform this shot into pure black and white, as if I had copied it onto high-contrast litho film, a look that was popular in the 1960s. Like many other artifacts of that era, the litho look has found a new audience today. Well, thankfully, darkroom work is no longer required. Simply choose Image>Adjustments>Threshold and move the slider until you see the effect you want. Here I settled on a Threshold level of 170.
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12. Since Threshold produced a rather dark and gritty rendition of my subway shot, I thought it would be appropriate to offset it with a brighter high-key version. So I selected Filter>Distort>Diffuse Glow. After experimenting, I settled on the default settings of Graininess 6, Glow amount 10, Clear amount 16. To my mind, this could be the next cover of a supernatural mystery novel.
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Advanced Techniques For High Contrast
To convert a color original to black and white, if you used the Channel Mixer in earlier versions of Photoshop, or Image>Adjustments>Black & White in CS3, then your file is still in color RGB mode, even though all you see is grayscale. You can keep it that way if you think you might add some color to the image at some point, such as to tone it sepia, for example. However, if you plan to stay strictly black and white and you want to pick up some speed, choose Image>Mode>Grayscale after your initial conversion. Since you should be working on a copy, it’s OK to click on “Discard color information.” This cuts your file down to 1⁄3 of its size in RGB, speeding up filter processing and leaving you more space on your hard drive.

To see the effects of different filters on the same image and compare them quickly, open the layers palette and make a copy of your background layer. Click on the background layer to make it active, then choose Layer>Duplicate Layer. Now, the dialog box that comes up will read “Duplicate: Background As: Background copy, with “Background copy” highlighted. Type in the name of the filter you plan to apply to this new layer, for example, “Poster Edges,” then click OK. This new layer will now be active and highlighted in the layers palette. Run the filter you want to try, Filter>Artistic>Poster Edges, and it will be applied to the new layer. Click on the eye icon to the left of each layer to turn its visibility on or off. Now, you can quickly compare the original background layer with the filter effect layer. To add more filter effects to compare, repeat these steps for each filter. Then simply use the eye icons to turn the visibility of different layers on and off.