B&W?

[letthemusicflow]

I'm thinking this might look better black and white but I'm not sure. What do you think?
If yes, how should I go about converting it? I have GIMP but I don't know a good way to convert to b&w.
thanks
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q244/thespinningsong/batch1700048.jpg

[1shot wonder]

You can use LR or PS to do the conversion but this image needs something more than just changing it to B&W. Just my thoughts.

[bjordan]

I'd keep it color, warm it up, and play with saturation to get an old-timey lomo feel. But, here's what I do for BW conversion in GIMP.

Colors --> Components --> Decompose (RGB, to layers). A new image will be created with the Red, Green, and Blue channels as B&W layers. Many times one of the layers will look great, but they don't for this picture. Here's why:

RED: House and wheelbarrow are too bright, the blue parts of the mower are black.
GREEN: Nice overall, but the nice red shape on the mower is lost and the grass is a bit light
BLUE: Dark, contrasty, wheels are lost.

So, you start playing with layer modes, and rearranging the layers. For this picture, I hid red, and set green to "lighten only," and merged those visible layers. That added the grass and wheels into the blue. Then, I made red visible over that at "lighten only," and reduced opacity to about 25%.

That was nice for me, but you'll find something better if you spend some time on it. If you want to get really nutty, use curves on the top layer in a blend mode and see what it does.

Make sure to try Colors --> Desaturate too, and compare those to your decompose version. Sometimes it will be better. Channel mixer is another option.

[poloman]

Don't know if you can do this in Gimp......
Add a blank layer....full it with black......
Set layer style to color.

[bjordan]

Don't know if you can do this in Gimp......
Add a blank layer....full it with black......
Set layer style to color.

Yes, you can do that in Gimp, but Color-->Desaturate is a much quicker way to do the exact same thing.

[poloman]

In photoshop it isn't the same thing. So I thought it might be different in Gimp as well.

[bjordan]

Desaturate has 3 options in Gimp. "Level" is the same as a black layer in color mode. "Luminosity" is a bit different, and there is a third "average" option.

[letthemusicflow]

thanks