georgieboy98

Most Bubblers are pretty well clued up on making B/W images but here’s something that is a cut above the grayscale conversion that a lot of folk do.
I found this tutorial in an article by Scott Kelby and have quoted freely from it in this Journal entry.
This method of converting an RGB image to grayscale lets you isolate just the luminosity in the photo and separating out the colour. By doing this you will end up with a pretty good grayscale image.

1) Open the colour photo that you want to convert

2) Go IMAGE>Mode>Lab Color. Your photo wont have changed thus far.

3) Under Layers click on Channels and you’ll see that your photo is no longer made up of Red Blue and Green. Instead the Lightness channel (the luminosity) has been separated.

4) Click on the LIGHTNESS Channel and your photo will now look Grayscale on screen

5) Now go IMAGE>Mode>Grayscale and from the menu that pops up click OK to discard the other channels.

6) Hit F7 (to open layers palette), click on the Background Layer and then click Ctrl+J to duplicate the background layer. Switch the Blend mode of this duplicate layer to Multiply and your photo will become much darker on screen.

7) Now here comes the clever bit – just lower the Opacity for this layer in the layers palette until you have it looking how you want it.

You’ll end up with an image that looks far better than if you had simply hit the Desaturate button. Let me know how you get on with this.

Peter