Mike and all, remember back in the day when we were discussing black and white conversions? (topic "black and white conversions") I have tried to describe this to various people, and their eyes just glaze over, as mine were until I actually played with this for awhile. I think this is overall the best way to convert to black and white--or at least the most deliberate. But clearly many people prefer something more intuitive. You mentioned adding a black and white conversion to CM that mixed the three channels and then allowed full use of masks and curves. Have you given this any more thought? Could this work a little like the channel mixer in PS, or would the channels be lost?
G
revisiting B&W
Yes, that eye glazing thing. Hopefully the final result will wake people up though :-)
It is a lot like the channel mixer, and even a little better because you can control each channel with curves, instead of just an overall percentage.
As far as eyes glazing, it would make a lot of sense to bundle everything into an action and tie it to a function key - just push a button and boom - set up the B&W soft proof, go into Curvemeister, do the curves, pop out again, and convert to the profile. All in one handy dandy action.
It is a lot like the channel mixer, and even a little better because you can control each channel with curves, instead of just an overall percentage.
As far as eyes glazing, it would make a lot of sense to bundle everything into an action and tie it to a function key - just push a button and boom - set up the B&W soft proof, go into Curvemeister, do the curves, pop out again, and convert to the profile. All in one handy dandy action.
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mikemeister_admin
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that eye glazing thing. Hopefully the final result will wake people up though :-)
Well, it certainly should, but takes...well, not really all that much work. It certainly should impress/wake people up.
It is a lot like the channel mixer, and even a little better because you can control each channel with curves, instead of just an overall percentage.
I think here you are referring to the soft proof technique. I was referring to this quote of yours from last year:
"I haven't put a lot of thought into using CM to do B&W conversions, but let me think about it a bit. It would be easy to add a "B & W" button that simply averaged the channels together to get a black and white image. Then you could use curves and masks behind that to get some dynamite black and white out of it."
I was wondering if once the channels were averaged as you considered above, would one lose the ability to modify them? Seems like all the curves and masks would be lost except the grayscale one.
For a brief moment, I thought that maybe using CS3's B&W feature might provide something extra, but I guess since it is just based on color selection rather than channel selection it doesn't.
As far as eyes glazing, it would make a lot of sense to bundle everything into an action and tie it to a function key - just push a button and boom - set up the B&W soft proof, go into Curvemeister, do the curves, pop out again, and convert to the profile. All in one handy dandy action.
This sounds really good. This sounds like a great streamlining to what Greg once suggested writing up...
You're right about the "no mask" not being a toggle. I'll see if I can add this feature since it would be convenient.
The averaging would happen after the curves were applied to RGB, so it would work the way you want, with the curve operating on the color data before it is merged.
I've attached an action that ties all this to the F3 key. See what you think.
The averaging would happen after the curves were applied to RGB, so it would work the way you want, with the curve operating on the color data before it is merged.
I've attached an action that ties all this to the F3 key. See what you think.
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mikemeister_admin
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Pull yourself together, Greg. You'll do absolutely anything to keep from writing that up yourself, won't you? :)
Mike, now it's all coming back to me how many issues there were over how to organize the mask controls and their associated fallout. If a "no mask" toggle has other consequences that I'm not considering, I completely withdraw my suggestion:)
The action you posted is a thing of beauty. It works perfectly, and makes the whole B&W thing simple and elegant. Very easy to make versions now and blend them in PS. Thanks.
Mike, now it's all coming back to me how many issues there were over how to organize the mask controls and their associated fallout. If a "no mask" toggle has other consequences that I'm not considering, I completely withdraw my suggestion:)
The action you posted is a thing of beauty. It works perfectly, and makes the whole B&W thing simple and elegant. Very easy to make versions now and blend them in PS. Thanks.
Yes, there were quite a number of ideas discussed here relating to masks, resetting, etc. Although the end result does not include all of them, I hope everyone had the satisfaction of seeing at lease some of their ideas materialize.
The mask/no mask toggle should not be hard to do, but there are often surprises when it comes to implementation - we'll see.
I'm glad the B+W action works well. I'll post it to the public area so other people can get a look at it.
The mask/no mask toggle should not be hard to do, but there are often surprises when it comes to implementation - we'll see.
I'm glad the B+W action works well. I'll post it to the public area so other people can get a look at it.
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