FlirtynFun Photography wrote:
First, and I know this is a retouching forum, but the key to achieving "black" is to keep light off of the background. In a dark room, with enough distance, your background could be white seamless paper and you could achieve this same goal.

This is how I think this image was done, (above comment): Also, because parts of the glasses, and part of her lips were so bright, the rest had to be exposed very low, so as to not blow out these areas. It appears that they are NOT blown out, from looking at this image, though there are certainly some pure white pixels there.
  Being a Photoshop buff myself, I also like the suggestion that BoazR made - to use curves, and desaturate, (if, as I believe, the image started out in color). The thing is, if you understand all of your tools, you can get ANY look you desire. These are just a few ideas how this image can be treated, during and after the capture.
  You can also set a black point, (if there isn't already one), and make sure that your darkest pixel(s) are, in fact, as black as they can be. Find the darkest pixel(s), using the "threshold" feature in Photoshop. Hint: the whole image will go toward the opposite color of the pixel you select to set as the black point, so you may want to change that color before doing anything else.
-Don

AaronArthurLl wrote:
Try looking at your BLUE channel on photoshop, and see if that gives you a closer black and white affect you'd like. If so, copy and past it to your layers.

There is no trying. Any image can be done like that. Takes 30 seconds in Lightroom.
1. Set the light first.
2. Use luminosity of red, orange and yellow to match tones.
3. Use Camera calibration to give shape.
4. Make preset to spend 2 seconds next time instead of 30.

Daniel Meadows wrote:
The overall contrast depends vastly on your starting point, but to crush the blacks like that just pull the Blacks slider down in ACR. If you aren't starting with a RAW there are a million ways in Photoshop but I use Exposure>Gamma Correction.

I believe the question was how to make white skin-black?

Tulack wrote:
I believe the question was how to make white skin-black?

I can't see that written anywhere, perhaps the OP could clarify, I think we're all answering different questions.

Daniel Meadows wrote:
I can't see that written anywhere, perhaps the OP could clarify, I think we're all answering different questions.

It's not so hard to distinct Caucasian person from Black.

FlirtynFun Photography-you can not make white skin black by keeping light from background.

BoazR - you can not make white skin black by desaturating it.

JJMiller - black is luminosity level, it's not a color.

AaronArthurLl-blue channel would not make white skin black.

Tulack wrote:
It's not so hard to distinct Caucasian person from Black.

Hahaha true, although I'm still not sure if the OP is talking about the heavy blacks in the shadows or 'black' looking skin.

Daniel Meadows wrote:
Hahaha true, although I'm still not sure if the OP is talking about the heavy blacks in the shadows or 'black' looking skin.

You think he was asking how to make image darker?

Tulack wrote:
You think he was asking how to make image darker?

No but based on the wording of his post my best guess was that he was asking how to achieve this style of monochrome with crushed blacks and dark low-mids while keeping the highlights but we'll see when he elaborates I guess

Daniel Meadows wrote:
No but based on the wording of his post my best guess was that he was asking how to achieve this style of monochrome with crushed blacks and dark low-mids while keeping the highlights but we'll see when he elaborates I guess

If you see the rest of the portfolio, you would see that this style of monochrome is called "turning Caucasian to Black"