Registered: 08-2014 Location: Leicestershire, UK Posts: 1244
Selective use of B&W adjustment layer It took me some time to work out how to do this so I have written up what I did in case it helps anyone else.
Have to say that I am not sure it is necessarily the best way to do what I wanted but if nothing else it helped my understanding of layers and I got a small sense of achievement in working out what to do (little things/little minds and all that )
I tend to use a B&W adjustment Layer (BWAL) as part of my B&W workflow. I aim to get a good contrast in the colour image to help with the conversion to B&W
This image is just for illustration but in this case (for example) I might have wanted to use a BWAL to give some changes in tones to the orange ceiling without altering the other parts that were also orange.
As the sliders affect the whole image you need some kind of mask.
Just using a single BWAL mask doesn’t work in seeing what is happening because if you just use a single BWAL and mask you have a partially B&W image (created by the BWAL) and a partially colour one (where the underlying colour image is revealed when you paint on the relevant part of the mask)
Open image in PS
Suppose you want to have transition from light to dark along ceiling but not change orange on LHS
- Duplicate B/G copy and add B&W adj layer
DO NOT move sliders.
Merge B&W adj layer and B/G copy 2 to form new base image
Create a new copy of b/g layer and place at top of stack
Create a new B&W adj layer and darken ceiling (and rest of oranges in the image) by moving sliders
Merge B&W adj layer and B/G copy 2 to create new B&W image.
Remove white mask and replace with black mask
Paint in ceiling as wanted, leaving rest of image as it was ie other oranges not altered
Duplicate top two layers - B/G copy 2 and BASE image and merge to create new base image
Continue processing as normal - in my case to produce this:
Please feel free to comment along the lines of:
Why did you go through all that rigmarole when you could have just .......
(and part of my answer is .... because I wanted to know how to do it )
--- Chris
One day I might grow up, but I hope not
Say YES unless good reason to contrary