Colour to B/W

[Dannemois]

Guidance please on how to turn this colour image to a black & white image without losing quality.

Thanks Roy

[Gadget]

Hi Roy 

There are various ways and they depend on the software that you use.

Here's a useful guide for Adobe Photoshop:

http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/or/black-and-white.html

I tend to use the Channel Mixer, with monochrome ticked and play around until I get the effect that I want. I then use either Levels or Curves to get a good tonal balance. This depends on your personal preferences.

Also, you might want to bring some bits out more than others and,  in this case, you can select these parts and promote to a layer and work on just that or mask the parts that you don't want to work on!


Here's a quick example using your image.

First using Channel Mixer and Levels and second just Desaturated to show the difference.


Gadget

[Dannemois]

Now you are talking a foreign language   Many thanks Gadget, I will look at the tutorial honest.  Best Regards, Roy

[Gadget]

What graphics program do you use, Roy?

(my Welsh is very rusty    )

[Dannemois]

I usually use MGI Photo Suite III and I do have access to Photo Plus 8 both of which I am in the process of trying to learn.  I also downloaded the free Irfan View as suggested in the on-site tutoral.
Roy

[Gadget]

Hi again 

I'm not familiar with either of those but, having Googled, I would think that Photo Plus 8 would have a facility to adjust the  RGB channels and probably levels and curves (the white-black adjusters) , in addition to desaturation/greyscale and contrast.

I don't see whether  Photo Suite has these facilities.

An alternative freeware program that is very good is The Gimp:

http://www.gimp.org/

This does have all the features that I've mentioned and is a good free competitor to Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro.

Irfanview is very good for downloading 'odd' formatted files and resizing, etc. but is very limited for photo editing.


Gadget

[Dannemois]

Thanks Gadget, I will have a look at it later, trouble in the form of my granddaughter has just walked in so no time at the moment.