Digital color pics converted to B/W

[Raven Song]

Well I found it fun and interesting to convert some of my color images into b/w....things do have a different feel to them.
Now I hope I will be able to post up the images...

---Crow
WOOT!  It worked!

[Raven Song]

Cool.  Guess I'll try my luck on a couple more here... I like how my tiger painting looks in b/w...
---Crow

[Raven Song]

and just one more... This was a color shot taken through the prime focus of a 7" diameter apochromatic refractor...but with the color removed I think it helps it in some ways.
---Crow

[geden3]

Wow Maya.  These are very cool.  I especially like the lion.  The moon is cool in B&W too.  I have found there are many different ways to convert color to black and white.  Some work better than others but a lot depends in the image for which method works and others don't.  It's amazing the effect an image has when converting to B&W.  The whole feel of an image changes.  Even though we all see in color and that is how we see the world what is it that really catches our interest looking at a B&W image?  The moon took on a very different meaning and feel to it. 

Reagrds

Gary

[geden3]

Maya,  Which method did convert your images? 

Regards

Gary

[Raven Song]

Thanks Gary!  I got a small HP Photosmart 335 printer the other day -- tiny thing, and it just prints 4 x 6 prints but uses very long lasting HP Vivera inks and good paper = nice for my snapshots -- and it came with HP Image Zone software which I put on my laptop along with PS Elements 4 (I use PS CS on my other computers) so I used the HP app. to convert the images to b/w.  It was very easy and allows plenty of choices.  PS works great too.  I just played with the adjustments until I liked what I saw.

Funny, the bw seems rather soothing to the eye/brain.  I liked all the shades working in the tiger painting.

Different as night and day... 

---Crow

[Raven Song]

Another acrylic painting I've done -- this time I used PS and just desaturated the color completely out, then raised the contrast a little bit. 

A pair of barn owls share a misty moonlight meeting...
---Crow

[geden3]

Superb also in B&W.  The desaturate seemed to work just fine for this.  I have noticed that when I convert some images to B&W that I also have to bring up the contrast a little bit.  When color is taken out our brains are just processing brighness and contrast. Hue is gone so the simpler elements are left.  Great B&W image.

Regards

Gary

[Raven Song]

Thanks Gary!  Yeah, more contrast seems to help.  It's really interesting to check on an image in progress by converting to b/w, it shows areas you might want to work on which when viewed just in colors may distract you from noticing.  Another helpful trick is mirror-reversing an image...this helps in sculpture or drawing/painting.

These barn owls were inspired from a close encounter with one I had one evening in a marsh.  They really fly silently and I didn't hear one approach at all -- suddenly he/she was just there 3 feet away and alighted on the branch glowing like a ghost as the white feathers reflected the moonlight.  It was so cool!

Here's another digital shot of an acrylic painting I did of some scarlet macaws in a tropical setting.  In converting this to b/w I discovered that the intense reds, yellows and blues in the birds' feathers looked too much like the same tones of gray so I had to take the yellows and blues into the PS hue/saturation/lighten mode and adjust the yellows to their lightest and the blues to a shade or two darker so that each color of feather looked different in b/w.  The result --

---Crow

[geden3]

Yeah I understand about certain hues haveing the same greyscale values.  In Elements you only have levels to work with.  There is also layers so you can adjust the levels in diferent layers.  Gare may be able to know how that could be done.  In CS2 you have the channel mixer which would give you a lot of flexablity to distinguish the separate greyscale values.  It just the nature of converting to B&W from color.  Lots of ways out there for conversions.  Depending on the image one way may be better suited than another way so I feel it is a good thing to know several methods.  Your conversion worked very well.

Regards
Gary

[Gare]

One of the ways to avoid color weighting when going from RGB to grayscale is to go through LAB color in Photoshop. LAB is one channel of Luminance, a channel from blue to yellow, and one from green to magenta. CIE LAB is a superset of Adobe RGB, so nothing is lost.

1.) Choose Image>Mode>LAB.
2.) On the Channels palette, click the L channel.
3.) Choose Image>Mode>Grayscale. Accept the other channels' deletion.

My Best,

Gare

[Raven Song]

Great info, Gare.  I just selected the grey tones by eye.  Next time I'll try the LAB mode and see what it comes out as.
---Crow

[Gare]

Hi Raven--

If you do a comparison between just going from RGB mode to grayscale, and grayscale via LAB, the LAB conversion will prove noticably lighter and better. In the early days of photography, ortho film cast blues as near-white, and reds as near-black.

Funny anecdote: Stan Laurel (of Laurel & Hardy) had eyes so pale blue, early cinema film didn't record them, but only his pupils, making the funny guy look like Village of The Damned/scary! Fortunately, the bulk of his movie work was under an improved B&W film that did render his blue eyes. But look at the very pale eyes of movie stars in films and promo stills before 1940. I didn't do any research, but I think it was post WWII that B&W film finally registered reds and blues with proportionate em...monochromacity, if there's such a term.

CIELABis a device-independent color space. I wrote a little about it here.

255 levels of luminosity,

Gare

[Raven Song]

Hi Gare,
I just read and enjoyed that tutorial.  You've explained it all so well! 

Trying to capture some of the amazing colors in nature when painting is complex, especially considering the color-shifting/reflection of things like hummingbird feathers, the scales of butterfly and insect wings, pearls, flower petals, etc.  under varying lighting. 

I've read that birds and insects also can see in the ultraviolet ranges we can not, and their coloring and feather displays, as well as other things around them, can look very different to their eyes glowing and enhancing areas we don't notice...this being a major method which birds like hawks/raptors can see the trails of their prey species through the grass and foliage from high in the sky.  The vision of cats and dogs and many other mammal predators also is different from ours allowing them better ability to notice movement with less distraction from the colors of foliage.  Eyesight and color perception is very interesting.

---Crow

[Gare]

Indded, Raven--

You'll find something interesting if you dig your blacklight out of your 60s closet and put it on an extension cord at night and shine it on many varieties of flowers, such as the common daffodil. We can't see UV without aid, but pollinating insects can. And flowers have little landing strip markers that invite the insect to come 'n' get it!

Unseen worlds, eh? Ah, the majesty!

My Best,

Gare