This section describes new features in Photoshop CS3 that are commonly used in my workflow. For a comprehensive list open Photoshop CS3 and choose Help > Photoshop Help > Getting Started > What's new.
Superimposed on the Curves dialog is a histogram of the original image. A nice feature that makes setting black and white points much easier.
Non-destructive editing is possible with Smart Filters. After opening an image choose Filter > Convert for Smart Filters. Then, when you apply filters, they will appear as separate entries under the image layer. Double-click on the filter name to revise filter settings. Double-click on the small icon to the right of the name to edit blending options.
You may wonder how Smart Filters remember their settings. Recall that filters, when recorded in actions, remember their settings at the time the action was recorded. Leveraging from this technology, it was easy for developers to convert their filters to Smart Filters. One additional line of code was all that was required to let Photoshop know that a filter is a Smart Filter.
If you are using a filter that does not appear in the menu when Smart Filters are enabled there is a workaround. In Photoshop choose File > Scripts > Browse and navigate to:
C:\Program Files\Adobe Photoshop CS3\Scripting Guide\Sample Scripts\JavaScript\EnableAllPluginsForSmartFilters.jsx
This tells Photoshop that all filters are smart filters, although only those filters that save their state for Actions will work properly.
From ACR hold the Shift key down and choose Open Object. This opens the image as a Smart Object in Photoshop. Double-click on the image icon in the Layers Palette to revisit ACR and adjust settings. These adjustments do not change the original raw image, but are remembered as part of the state information in the Layers Palette. This feature is useful if you wish to tweak ACR settings at any time during processing.
You can also layer several references to the same raw file, each with different settings. For example you can have two separate layers, each with their own ACR Exposure setting, and mask the layers as appropriate. For this setup choose Shift/Open Object from ACR for the initial Smart Object. Then choose Layer > Smart Objects > New Smart Object via Copy. Then double-click on each image icon to specify independent parameters in ACR. Simply duplicating the layer will not work as both layers will link to the same Smart Object. To un-smart a Smart Object right-click on the layer and choose Rasterize Layer.
From Bridge you can open a JPEG image in ACR. Yes, ACR stands for Adobe Camera Raw. Well, suspend disbelief for a minute. To open JPEG images in ACR from Bridge right-click on a thumbnail and choose Open in Camera Raw. Any edits done in ACR are saved as XMP metadata in the JPEG image. The only application that can read and write this metadata is ACR. This feature allows non-destructive edits, via ACR, on JPEG images. Since all adjustments in ACR merely record slider values in the metadata, original pixels remain unchanged.
A few caveats are in order. JPEG images, even when opened in ACR, do not contain raw data. In particular, you cannot retrieve blown highlights as you can with raw images. You are only working with 8 bits rather than the usual 12 or 14 bits found in raw files. And adjustments to color temperature will yield better results with raw images than JPEG images. Finally, be careful not to save images in Photoshop to the ACR version or you will lose all your XMP metadata.
There is an extensive section on processing Black & White images in this tutorial. This includes a Black & White action that converts an image to black & white in Photoshop. For raw files there is an alternative: simply set saturation to zero in ACR. Additional adjustments to control black point (Black slider), white point (Exposure slider), contrast, and brightness can be done.
Manipulating an image in ACR has several advantages. All edits are non-destructive making it easy to revisit settings and make minor adjustments. With raw images blown highlights are easily retrieved as you have access to all recorded tonal values. Finally, editing 12-bit images minimizes banding for extreme situations.
While all of the above can be accomplished in Photoshop CS2, CS3 adds features specifically targeting the black & white conversion process. In ACR choose the HSL/Grayscale tab, enable Convert to Grayscale, and and adjust the contribution for individual colors.
Although convenient you will find less image noise if you leave the image in color and reduce all Saturation sliders in the HSL Saturation tab to -100. Then choose the Luminance tab to adjust the contribution of individual colors. Further adjustments may be made with the Saturation sliders in the Camera Calibration tab. For convenience create two presets: one preset to set all saturation sliders to -100, and another preset to restore the sliders to zero.
Using the raw format, and developing in ACR, is now my preferred workflow for Black & White.