Converting to B&W without Photoshop

I've read tutorials in various places on the web about using the

channel mixer to do a better job on making B&W images than simply

removing the colour. I'd like to do this, but I am lacking a

channel mixer in my Photoshop Elements. I can't afford full blown

Photoshop.

 

What I'm wondering is if there is something (significantly) cheaper

that I can use that technique in. I checked The Gimp and found a

reference to one, but it must only be in the linux version because

the menu it said to look under doesn't exist in my Windows version.

What I really would like is if there's a small tool just for

converting to B&W as I am otherwise happy with PSE. I've tried to

do some searching, but I get tons of false hits. So I'm appealing

to the community. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

Thank you,

I assume that you have opened the enhancement menu, clicked on Levels, and played around with the three individual color histograms? The default is a single RGB, but that's not all there is.

Actualy, I have used levels and noticed the drop down there, but it never occured to me to use that for better B&W. I'm not much of a graphics arts person. It was more a matter of seeing the tutorials, seeing how boring my B&W was, and thinking, "gee, I wish I could do what that tutorial says to do.". :) So I don't know enough about this stuff to have seen an alternative. I'll play around with it a bit and see what I can come up with.

 

Thanks,

I don't know about p.s, but with gimp to extract an individual greyscale channel you go to Colors->Mode->decompose. Then choose rgb, this gives you three different greyscale images for obviously red, green, blue. It works for me under windows and Linux.<p>

Will

There is a channel mixer for the gimp at

 

http://registry.gimp.org/plugin?id=1918

 

and here

 

http://registry.gimp.org/plugin?id=1732

 

and at the imaging factory there is a plugin in for converting to B&W,with PShop

 

http://www.theimagingfactory.com/data/pages/products/products3.htm#cbw

I'm pretty sure you can use PhotoShop actions with Elements you just can't

create them. Fred Miranda has an excellent B/W conversion action. I use it

very frequently. It allows conversion as if no filter, red, green, yellow, or

orange filters were used. Additionaly Fred has an infared conversion action. I

am also pleased with the resuklts this provides. They are avaiable at:

 

http://www.fredmiranda.com/Action_profilesPage/index.html

Have you thought about getting an older Photoshop version off somebody who has upgraded?

Will and Beerbrain/Ronny - Thanks for the Gimp hints. I'll have to give that another look.

 

Michael - I'm pretty sure you can't use them, but not positive. I know I've seen a lot of people say that they don't use Elements because you can't use actions. I'll double check, but I don't think they work.

 

Jay - Unfortunately, that's illegal. If I was willing to steal it, I'd just steal PS7. I've got plenty of friends willing to send it to me that think I'm nuts for not taking it. :)

 

Thanks,

Michelle, I hope I didn't sound sarcastic about the Levels. I've never used it for what you want, nor know of anyone who has. I was just wondering if you had tried it, and it wasn't suitable. <P>In a practical sense, if someone buys a new version of software, and gives you the old version, they are not "sharing" their old version with you, since they will no longer be using it. It's being passed on, like a book. I've never actually read one of those licensing agreements, but does it say that your CD must be destroyed when you upgrade?

<I>I hope I didn't sound sarcastic about the Levels. I've never used it for what you want, nor know of anyone who has. I was just wondering if you had tried it, and it wasn't suitable. </I>

<p>

Not at all. I had never thought of doing it. I played around with it a bit, though, and it seemed like no matter which colour I used, it looked the same. Maybe I'm not doing it right? I'm not much good with graphic stuff.

<p>

<i>In a practical sense, if someone buys a new version of software, and gives you the old version, they are not "sharing" their old version with you, since they will no longer be using it. It's being passed on, like a book. I've never actually read one of those licensing agreements, but does it say that your CD must be destroyed when you upgrade?</I>

<p>

If you buy a new, full, version, then you can sell your old one unless the EULA specifically prohibits that. The problem is when someone <i>upgrades</i> to a new version. That is, buys an upgrade version. Then the old version is essentially part of the package. You are using that to get a discount on the new one. In this case, you can't sell the older version. You don't have to destroy it; you just can't give/sell it to someone else. Does that make more sense?

Michelle: Does Elements have a "Saturation" dialog box? And within that dialog can you control saturation and lightness for the individual primary colors (RGBCMY) as well as the image as a whole?

 

I'm still using PS 3.0 (Mac), which also lacks the channel mixer, but can do very nicely controlled conversions from color to grayscale by desaturating the whole image - and then - BEFORE exiting the saturation dialogue box(!!!) - selectively lighting or darkening the 6 primary colors (usually yellow and red "lighter" and blue and cyan "darker" - magenta and green don't seem to make much difference in most images).

 

This MUST be done as one combined step, because once you de-saturate and then leave the dialog box, you've lost the color differences that allow you to lighten or darken colors selectively.

I think Andy has it. I had forgotten about lightening or darkening individual colors in the enhancement/color/hue-saturation box. I'll try that myself. Michelle, I'm against software piracy, too, but I think your halo is a little too tight! The company has gotten all the money it has coming to it for that piece of software. If it's an older version, the company no longer even sells it. But I admire your conviction.

Another way of working with separate colors is the curves tool that should be available in PE. There you can also work with separate colors and e.g. simulate color filters.

Andy - It does have a dialog where you can control the saturation of each colour, but the option to remove all the colours from the image is in another place. I don't see any way to do what you are saying. Maybe I'm missing something?

 

Scott - I'm no angel; I just happen to be a programmer by trade, so piracy for me is not only illegal, but hypocritical. I do wish the company itself sold older versions at a cheaper price. That would be an ideal solution.

 

Peter - No curves, either. That's the other big killing point for a lot of people when they consider Elements. Personally, I never could get the hang of curves when I played with them in The Gimp, anyway. :)

 

If I can find a bit of spare time, I'm going to try and get that channel mixer plug in for The Gimp that Beerbrain/Ronny mentioned a couple days ago. I'll let you know how it goes if this thread is still around when I finally get a chance to try it.

 

Thanks everyone,