High-Key Black & White Photo Effect

High-Key photography refers to intentionally overexposing an image to exaggerate highlights and create a lot of white within your image. This effect can work great on portraits, particularly of children, where the white, soft tones give a feeling of innocence to the picture. High-Key photography also can look great in black and white.

This tutorial will show you how to simulate the effects of high-key photography in Photoshop. In some ways, you may even prefer this to shooting over-exposed images to begin with, because it gives you a lot of control over the final outcome.

To start with, we’ll need a photo. something with a light background generally works best.  I headed over to Stock.xchng and found a nice baby picture.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - High-Key Black And White Photography - Fig. 1

First, go to Image - Adjustments - Gradient Map and select a black to white gradient map. This will convert your image to black and white and up the contrast slightly.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - High-Key Black And White Photography - Fig. 2

Now go to Image - Adjustments - Levels and change the Input Levels to the following values.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - High-Key Black And White Photography - Fig. 3

Next, create a new layer and fill it with white. Set the layer mode to “Soft Light.”

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - High-Key Black And White Photography - Fig. 4

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Added Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 12:34 am under Photo Effects.