black and white conversions

[ggroess]

OK that hurt my wallet in more ways than one....

Now I'm going to have to seriously look at CS3..$$$$$$$

And I'll be paying Mike back all the Saturation money he gave me last week.....

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Good Job!!!

[mikemeister_admin]

I'm not comfortable with all this money exchanging hands. I think you guys should try to show your appreciation with a simple "great job" or "thank you".

...since I haven't seen one red cent.

And no, please don't go to the bother of scanning and posting one...grow up, Peter Pans.

[ggroess]

$

No scanning involved...

[-default]

There may be a way to get the same effect in Elements.  I'll see if I can come up with something.

PS - here you go, Gloria: ¢

[mikemeister_admin]

There's really no cents trying to reason with you guys.

[ggroess]

punny...very punny....

G  :)

[mikemeister_admin]

l don't think you can do this in PS

Well, I guess you can! I never apply curves without an adjustment layer in PS, but I see that's all you need to do.

I'm not sure that I'm following you 100% but I think you can do what you're looking for in PS with a curves adjustment layer. Moreover, you can have your cake, chai, and eat & drink them too.

1. open image.
2. create a curves adjustment layer with no adjustments (open it and click ok right away).
3. turn off the channels you don't want to make any adjustments to--in this case turn off the G&B channels.
4. open the curves layer that was just made, ctrl+1 to switch to the R channel. you should now see the effects of your curves to the R channel (since the G&B are turned off. thus, it would have been nice if PS allowed the user to disable a channel while still within curves). in my example below I created a point at input 78/output 28 on the R channel.
5. create a new, empty layer with multiply blending option selected (shift+ctrl+N to get the dialog box where you can name the layer and select the blending option).
6. turn off the G&B channels again.
7. apply image: merged, G, normal, 100%
8. adjust the opacity of this new layer to taste: in the example below I used 20%.
9. now you have a curves adjustment layer to change the R channel as desired AND you have a G channel in multiply mode with which you can adjust the opacity as desired.

Is this what you meant to do?
The pain is having to turn off G&B.

Option: If you know that it's the G channel that you'll want to multiply onto the R you can create the curves and emply layer (the latter set to multiply), apply the G channel to the empty layer, then select curves layer, turn off the G&B channels, open the curves adjustment layer, ctrl+1, adjust your R channel. This alternative order isn't necessarily optimum, just another option.


Whoa! Check this out.
Open any image, or start with the finished product from above.
With only one channel selected while in RGB: i.e. R.
Delete the G channel. If you have any layers PS will want to flatten the image.
The R channel gets renamed to Cyan! The image exists in neither RGB or CMYK but rather "multichannel".
It just surprised me that the channels are renamed to match CMYK nomenclature.

[mikemeister_admin]

Here's what the layers look like.

[mikemeister_admin]

To do this without having to turn off channels:

1. create a group
2. within that group create 2 empty layers
3. set the bottom empty layer to normal and the top empty layer to multiply
4. to the bottom empty layer apply the R channel (normal, 100%) from the background.
5. create a curves adjustment layer clipping mask for the layer that just got applied.
6. in the composite channel adjust the contrast as desired (i.e. RGB 78/28)
7. to the top layer (still empty) apply the G channel from the background layer
8. reduce opacity as desired
9. now turn the group and and off to see the b/w & color versions

It looks like this...

[mikemeister_admin]

H, you need a little pocket satellite while you are traveling. Since Mike and George seem to be made of money, perhaps they can send a few cents your way. Better yet, maybe Mike can accomplish this within the program...a satellite button.

There were several cool things in your post that I needed to know. And it does provide a way to work on the each channel, though it is, as you say a pain that the curve keeps defaulting to RGB when I go back to it. Another plus is that you could apply a mask to the curve at that point, and that is good. I like the blending layer (you are eventually going to make it impossible not to name my layers, aren't you?)*, but got quite happily distracted by seeing how the sliders control the layers when seen color against grayscale.

But this will get complicated with adding the blue channel, and using various masks...one distraction and I've lost track of what I'm doing and have to backtrack.

What Mike has come up with will allow one to work on the file as a normal rgb channel, with access to modes(!) and masks, while viewing as a b&w. The only thing I'll have to go into PS for during the process is for some mask tweaking. I do believe a 'tweak' brush should be next on the list :)

Thanks, Howie.

*but apparently PS has now taken it upon itself to rename them at will. The 'cyan' was a surprise :)

I see you've been coming up with something else here while I'm replying...Yeah, I like that better, though still need masks in there. In CM, all masks are available. And modes. If you have CS3...