Expert: LizaL - 11/25/2006

Question
Dear Lizal,
thank you for your timely answer.  Tomorrow morning at 9 AM I will try it out.  Just a bit of a follow-up question will your method work using the channels method.  I tend to like to make my black and whites somewhat contrasty with a little punch.  Respectfully Stuart Arno
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The text above is a follow-up to ...

-----Question-----
Dear Lizal,
  the reason I have not had to ask you for help is quite simple.  All the help you have given me in the past has been so good that I was able to teach myself much more than I thought possible with your solid foundation.

however I must enlist your expert advice on something I have found no literature on.

I have a color photo of an owl.  He has extremely rounded yellow eyes he is sitting on an old pitchfork in front of an old dilapidated barn.  I want to convert the photo from color to black and white.  This I am quite capable of doing.  What I cannot figure out is how  do i maintaine his yellow eyes.  To sum up I have a color photo I want to make into a black and white photo.  No problems.  But maintaine the yellow eyes of the owl.

I am using Photoshop No. 7 I am using Windows xp on a gateway pc computer and Epson 1280 printer and my scanner is a canon fs4000.

please forgive the redundancy in the past your advice has been better than 100 percent.  I hope this particular problem proves not to be too difficult.

please allow me the privilege of wishing you and your family a happy and healthy and prosperous holiday season.

         respectfully yours Stewart Arno


-----Answer-----
Hi Stewart,

Good to hear from you! Hope you've been well.

No, this problem isn't too difficult. In fact, several years ago I learned a neat trick for doing just what you want, and I love sharing it with people because it's so easy!

To convert your color photo to black and white, use the Desaturate command, which is found under the Image pulldown menu, and in the Adjustments submenu. When you select Desaturate, the photo will automatically become black and white -- in other words, you won't see a dialog box.

Then all you have to do is select your History Brush tool from your tool palette (it's right below the regular brush; it shares space with the Art History brush). Now you can "paint" color back in wherever you choose. It's that simple!

I found a picture of an owl with yellow eyes, and did a little demo for you:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/desaturate_historybrush.mov

The reason this works so quickly and easily is that when you desaturate, you're decreasing the picture's color information to its lowest values -- as opposed to using the Grayscale option, where you actually convert the photo's file information to black and white. Using Grayscale is a much more severe change to a photo than Desaturation because you totally discard the color information. So in actuality, when you desaturate, the color's still there, but you've just lowered it, entirely.

The History Brush lets you bring that color information back to the picture because the color still exists -- you just made the levels so low by desaturation that they no longer show.

Hope that makes sense! The only codicil to this is that if you plan to change the size of your picture, do that *after* you desaturate and "paint" back in the color. Otherwise, the History Brush will have problems recognizing the picture after the size change, and you won't be able to proceed with the "painting." But other than that, I can't think of anything that might cause a glitch in the process.

Of course, and as always, if you have questions and/or problems, please post back and let me know.

Take care and have a happy holiday season!

Lisa

Answer
Hi again Stuart,

I think you might find it easier if you used Levels to sharpen up the black and white in your photo. I tried adjusting the channels after I'd desaturated and used the history brush, but I got better results using Levels.

Try that and post back if you have problems. And thanks for the positive feedback!

Thanks,

Lisa