Use a little known adjustment layer to turn a photo into gorgeous black and white or sepia.

Colored photos are beautiful, but sometimes a black and white or sepia photo creates a more compelling effect. I'll demonstrate with two photos which you'll find in the Part 6, lesson eight practice folder: girl-on-beach.jpgand curious-boys.jpg.

We'll start with Girl On Beach. Photoshop Elements has a number of ways to turn a photo into black and white. The most obvious is the Remove Color command in the Enhance menu. Press Ctrl J on Windows or Command J on a Mac to duplicate your photo. Double click on the name of this layer and change it to Remove Color. Press Enter to commit the change.

In the Menu Bar choose Enhance, Adjust Color and Remove Color. And that will turn your photo into black and white. Click on the Visibility icon to hide this layer. We'll come back to this layer later to compare this Remove Color method with the one I'm about to show you.

Click on the original photo layer and check the color chips. If your color chips aren't black over white, click on the Default Color icon next to the color chips which on my screen isn't visible because of my small recording size, but you'll be able to see it on your screen. You can also press a letter D to return your color chips to the default setting of black or white. D for default. Having the default colors is a very important step because if you start with the wrong colors, you'll get a really strange result.

Now let's apply a gradient map adjustment layer. In the Layers panel, click on the Create New Adjustment Layer icon and choose Gradient Map. Your photo will instantly turn into black and white. If I reveal and hide the Remove Color layer you can already see that the default setting of Gradient Map is better than simply using remove color.

But let's make a couple of tweaks to the Gradient Map on the Gradient Map panel. There's a Gradient bar that goes from black to white. Click directly on the Gradient Bar to get the Gradient Editor. This dialog box is so large that on my small recording screen it covers up most of my image. But let's see if we can work with this. Ignore all the thumbnails at the top and work directly with the gradient and specifically with the two color stops directly under the gradient. There is a black one on the left and a white one on the right.

If you want a black and white photo with higher contrast, click and drag both color stops toward the center slightly. Moving the left slider to the right will increase the amount of black in your photo. Moving the right slider to the left will increase the amount of white in your photo. When the photo looks good to you click OK.

When we compare the Remove Color method with the Gradient Map method, we can see that the Gradient Map gives us a much more interesting black and white. If you temporarily hide at the Gradient Map adjustment layer, you can see the color photo again. It's a very nice photo but there's something really elegant about the black and white version.

Another great photo look is sepia. I'll demonstrate on the Curious Boys photo. Get a Gradient Map adjustment layer and click on the gradient to access the Gradient Editor. Adjust the color stops as needed to get a great black and white. And I'll just make mine a little bit more contrasty. Move your mouse under the gradient to the center of the gradient and click to add a color stop. This will trash your image but don't worry about it. Click on the color swatch to choose a new color. When the Color Picker comes up, click on the color bar near the bottom to choose an orange color. Click inside the large color box to choose an individual color. The colors on the right will be more saturated than the colors on the left and the colors near the top will be lighter and brighter than the colors near the bottom. To get a nice sepia color click in the middle between the center and left side. And then click around until you get the color you want. So I'll just keep moving this around a little bit until I get a nice sepia color. And then I'll click OK.

Adjust the position of the middle color stop until you get the exact look you want. Moving to the left will lighten it and moving to the right will darken it. Click OK when you're satisfied. Here's my original photo. And here it is with sepia.

So that's how to use a Gradient Map adjustment layer to create stunning black and white or sepia photos.