I get excited about black and white portraits, and it’s amazing how much color they really hold. Each color in a portrait is translated into a tone of grey, and we can control those tones to affect the richness of the photograph.

I’m pleased with the results I’m getting from Perfect Photo Suite 9, and it’s made available some techniques I couldn’t use before. The technique in this video hasn’t worked for me in the past because the apps I’ve used for black and white have resulted in artifacts which look especially bad on skin. Give it a shot, and maybe it’ll open some new ideas for your work, too.

Here’s the video.

This my original color image:

This is the Deep Lips preset:

And this is the blend of the color with the black and white on top–having layers in PPS9 makes it easy to do fun effects, and there’s a lot more possibilities I haven’t even tried yet: