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Hi,
I have some shots that I want to convert to black and white in PS Elements 2.0
What is the best way to do this? Do I just remove colour and thats it ?!
I also want to add a tiny bit of grain to the shots to simulate a b/w film photo..
any help is appreciated..
Thanks,
njs123
You can but it may not look too good.
The way I do it is to use the channel mixer under the image menu or, preferably, as an adjustment layer. Tick the monochrome box at the bottom of the dialogue box and then adjust the three RGB sliders to adjust the strength of the channels. You can then tweak the overall brightness by using the constant slider at the bottom.
A general rule of thumb is to get all three channels to total 100%
Take a look at OptikVerve. They have a free PS plugin called Virtual Photographer which I have started usin recently. Gives pretty good control over b&w and also has various film simulations.
Ian
There's also a range of B&W plug-ins that I use for B&W from fotomatic.
Someone did post a link (think it was one of the Brian's) on the forum which is how I got it.
If I can find the link I'll post it later.
Merl♥
Hi,
I think you'll Photoshop Elements 2 does't have the Channel Mixer. However that's not a problem as I used to use the Channel Mixer method in CS but at a recent meeting of my camera club we were shown an even better method which gives even more control! The method involves using 2x Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers and is descibed in detail on the Adobe web site Here (hope that works its the first time I've tried to post a link). You can even adjust the Hue, Saturation and Contrast of each colour (RGB & CYM).
Hope this helps.
Simon
As PS Elements does not have a channel mixer as found in PS I would go along with Ian's suggestion and use the Virtual Photographer plug. This will let you change to BW and various other effects as well as add grain to your images. Best of all it's free and has lots of additional effects which you can also download. You can also save your own effects for future use. You can simulate the channnel mixer in Elements by using the following method.
1. Create a levels layer above your background layer and just click on OK for the moment.
2. Above this layer creat a Hue/Sat Layer and desaturate your image.
3. Go back to your layers palette and click on the RGB drop down menu and select the red channel and alter your levels until you are happy with the image. DO NOT CLICK ON OK at this time.
4. Do the same for the Green and Blue channels before clicking on OK.
5. Flatten your image if you so desire.
This method comes from Scott Kelby's book 'The photoshop elements book for digital photographers', and has the advantage of keeping your image as an RGB image as opposed to just using the greyscale option.
Tony
I use the hidden power tools for elements and seperate out the colour channels. It coppies the original photo onto 3 layers and filters them into the three colour channels. You can then blend them etc. It also adds curves etc. try hiddenelements.com
MDROGERS,
You shouldn't be waiting too much longer. The book should be out in a week or so. Over 50 tools with the new version of the Hidden Power book on the CD: http://aps8.com/hppe3.html
If I can answer any questions, let me know: thebookdoc@aol.com
Richard Lynch
http://hiddenelements.com
Speaking generally, separating channels is your best way to start, in my opinion, although a digital image from any digital camera has already suffered from colour interpolation, which is why scanned film is the better source for B&W.
"For example, in a six-million pixel camera, the colour filter array on top of the sensor dictates that red and blue information is recorded at 1.5 million pixels and green at 3 million. So the camera has to expand this information to meet the 6 million pixel goal. This built-in interpolation will show up in the individual colour channels as blotchy areas of the image, something you won't see when you separate the channels of a typical film scan."
If you can't separate channels, it may of interest to know that I've found that with the Canon G5, there is significantly smoother graduation of tones when the camera is set to shoot B&W than when colour is simply removed in software. I'm assuming that the Canon algorithm does an excellent job!
Perhaps an Elements filter will be able to simulate the grain for you.
Hope it works out, njs123.
S
For Dedicated Amateurs: The Image Plane
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