PSE & full PS B&W Cream action...

Are you tired of dull gray b&w conversions or conversions that are too blue? Well this action may help you. I personally do not care for gray b&w's most of the time & I truly dislike blue b&w conversions. This action is a simple action with only 3 layers. This action will give you a clean, bright white b&w. Yet it will keep the details in your darks without washing them out. It will lift the darks yet keep them rich. This works great on darker images, or subjects with darker hair. It will lift the highlights in the darker hair giving nice detail while still keeping the richness in the hair. This is now my go to b&w conversion.

Since I recorded this with PSE in mind, it is not a set but a single action and it will not group the layers in a folder since PSE does not have folders. If you are using full PS and really want the folder, start recording a new action, then hit play on this action in your layers panel (you will have to keep the original in your panel for this to work) then once my action runs, select all the layers from my action, hit ctrl/g to group the layers into the folder and stop recording. Now you'll have an action that does my steps but groups them into a folder. I'm a folder freak, so it may be worth the time to do if you are an odd ball like me! Lol!

Here are some examples.

Nugget after eating strawberries this morning. Yes, I leave the food on the faces of my girls. I like to keep it real! Lol!



And here is after the conversion and tweaking the layers...


Here is another example. Obviously this is not SOOC. But it also shows you that you can run this on an already edited image and still get a great result...


I did mask the lighten layer at 50% opacity out of the image on the left because it was already pretty bright....


Some detail shots that I edited... {oops, forgot to resize}


the action with the layers tweaked just a little...

A few options that are fun to try with this actions is...

*For a nice creamy bright color edit, run the action and turn off the b&w layer

**Lower the b&w layer for a creamy fadded look

***For a deeper rich more urban creamy look, change the blend mode of the b&w layer to soft layer and play with layer opacity....lowering it to around 30% or lower usually

**** For a brighter more washed out creamy look, change the blend mode of the b&w layer to screen and lower the opacity also to around 30% or so.

*****And of course with any action, play with all the layers until you have the desired look. Make sure to play with the Lighten layer if it's too bright, or raise it if it's still too dark and if the cream is too much, lower the opacity!

So give it a try and tell me what you think! Download the zipped file HERE! I included the atn, png & psd so that it can be used in all PSE versions. If you have any questions, please let me know.