Update: Since the creation of this article, Picnik has closed.
Easy, just use Photoshop, right? Sure, that would be the easiest way. However, Adobe Photoshop can cost anywhere upwards of a thousand dollars, so this isn’t something that just anyone can use. Most likely, you would have to be at a company, or a school, or have amassed a golden empire, not unlike the master of all that is funky, MC Hammer.
This piece is not targeted at that audience. This advice is for someone without a lot of photo editing experience who wants to turn their photo into black and white both quickly and easily (and for free). Fortunately, for people like this, there is a great free online photo editor at www.picnik.com. Let’s say you were MC Hammer, and you had a picture to which you had foolishly applied a golden tone, and now we’re taking a more artistic direction in your photography, so you wanted to convert it into a black and white photo. How could you do this quickly, easily (and free, most importantly)?
First, go to the website (http://www.picnik.com). Click on “Get Started Now”. On the home screen, click “Upload a Photo” and choose the picture that you want to edit from your computer’s hard drive.
Under the “Edit” tab (it should be chosen by default) click on the “Colors” button. There should be a couple of sliding bar options that pop up. The one we’re interested in is on the top, and it’s labeled “Saturation.” Click on the slider, and move the bar all the way to the left. Voila! It’s that easy. Your picture should now be rid of any color that it previously had. Now just press “OK”.
Click on the “Save & Share” tab on the right side. Choose your file name and file size, image dimensions, and file format. If all of this is too confusing, just leave all the default options as they are, and click “Save photo.” This will download the newly created black and white version of your picture back to your computer.
It’s that easy and quicker than slipping into a pair of Hammer Pants. There are a ton of other cool and free photo editing tools on www.picnik.com, so feel free to look around.