Color to Black-and-White gradient

[Doomsday]

Greetings, all!

What I am looking for is a way to take a color photo and have it gradually become black-and-white (I'm needing it to be a gradient from full color on the left to black-and-white on the right).

I've looked through the tutorials and can only immediately find ones for selective color addition/subtraction, but have not seen anything that gives me advice on a gradient from color to b&w in the same photo.

I'm working with PS 7 on a PC.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Kannon]

I dunno about PS7, but this works in Gimp and I think CS1... But couldn't you use the same layer style for the color removal (I believe it's a saturation modification layer, stuffed if I can remember the name of it in 7) And do a (Color, gimp it's white or black to desaturate, it goes off the color's actual saturation value)->transparent gradient? Reversing a FG to alpha is what I used here.

You know, if you scale it down enough, you can almost look over how badly my camera fails, lol.

[tamlin]

Easiest way to do this:

1. Open image in Photoshop
2. Select Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation
3. Set Saturation to -100
4. In the Layers palette, click on the Adjustment Layer's Layer Mask
5. Select the Gradient Tool, and choose a Black-White linear gradient
6. Start at the side of the image that you want to be B&W and click+drag across the image to draw the gradient. The gradient will be drawn on the Layer Mask, and will gradually mask the desaturation effect.
7. Release the mouse button and evaluate the effect. If it's not right, redraw the gradient (repeat step 6) with a different starting or finishing point.

[Doomsday]

Hi Tamlin,

I followed your instructions to the letter - several times, just to make sure I wasn't screwing something up - and I can't get it to give the proper results. Not sure what I could be doing wrong; like I said I followed your steps verbatim. I create the Adjustment Layer; it appears above the original color layer and there is already a highlighted Vector Mask in the layer. I apply the Black-White Gradient to the now-desaturated image and it remains completely desaturated.

Any thoughts on what could be up?

Thanks!

[tamlin]

You have to make sure you're drawing the gradient on the adjustment layer's mask. Make sure your foreground and background colours are set to the default (black and white), then click on the mask in the Layers palette (the white rectangle) to ensure it's selected before drawing the gradient. Let me know if you're still having problems.

[Doomsday]

I think I'm doing all of that. I click to establish the Adjustment Layer, click 'OK' on the dialog box that comes up asking to name the layer, and then the layer appears with the rectangle mask already highlighted. When I click on it, it does not change it's apprearance in any way. I then click the gradient tool, select the black-white linear gradient, verify that fore- and background colors are at default. I click and drag the gradient across my image and it remains completely desaturated.

I appreciate your help!

[Kannon]

Could we get a screenshot of your layer and mask settings? I've used PS7 before, but I don't remember the specifics without it in front of me. Maybe there's a button or a setting that's different for some odd reason.

Try the color isolation tutorial on biorust, but instead of the brush, use a gradient.

[tamlin]

OK, I've made a couple of PSDs to show you two similar ways of doing this. The first (BWgrad1.psd) has a masked hue/sat adjustment layer as described above. For the second (BWgrad2.psd) I duplicated the background layer, desaturated it, added a layer mask and then drew a black/white gradient on the layer mask.

I'm using CS3, but the principle should be the same for PS7.

Does that help?

[Doomsday]

First things first, thanks very much for all the helpful replies - especially Tamlin for going through all the trouble to work up those models for me! MUCH appreciated!

I did get it to work, though I had to go through an extra step - perhaps you can tell the what's and why's that this worked:

I replicated what you did on the first project - creating a hue/saturation layer, reducing its saturation to -100, click the mask, apply the black-white linear gradient. Still nothing. So I decide to grab the brush tool and paint some black on there just to see if the layer is working, which it is - everywhere I brush, color comes through. On a lark, I click the paint bucket tool and apply black to the whole thing, and (as you'd expect) it comes through all color. Here's the interesting part: I then applied the black-white gradient tool, and then it does exactly what I'd been trying for this whole time: color on one side fading to black-and-white on the other.

So why would I have to apply the black to the whole thing and only then get the results I was looking for?

Whatever the reasons, again I have to say thanks very much to Tamlin for all the great assistance!

[tamlin]

Originally Posted by Doomsday

So why would I have to apply the black to the whole thing and only then get the results I was looking for?

Well, that's a puzzler to be sure. You've obviously proved that the adjustment layer mask was working OK, so I can only assume there was some sort of a glitch with your Gradient Tool?

Anyhow - glad you finally got it to work!

[Mullinix]

I'm on PS CS3 on Mac, I used tamlins tip and it worked flawless for me. Thanks - PS: I'm new to the site, it's great!

[supertackyman]

I had done some thinking on this and allthough it seems like you and tamlin have worked it out i still wanna put in my 2 cents.

I seem to have stumbled upon a very easy way.
first, I opened my color pic.
then i converted it to b&w (im not sure hoe you pefer to but i simplt desaturated the image.)
lastly, I set my art history brush to erase to the first step, chose a brushtip that was about half as big as the pic and erased one side using the shift key to keep my stroke straight.

the end result.





P.S. im on 7 also

[kokopedal]

Desaturating or greyscaleing a picture is not the way to convert a picture to B/W. the best way is to select a new adjustment layer, then click on channel mixer,then click on the bottom left where it says monochrome. Adjust the sliders to the desired effect. the general rule of thumb is that all three sliders should total up to 100, however this is just a general rule and most of us don't like to play by the rules. This way will allow you to bring out the black and white tones you desire. You can also use this method to convert to IR (Infra red) There are other tweeks involved but try this and play with it I think you will be happier with the effect. Also rember that if you use the history brush instead of a layer mask you probably will loose the ability to go back and make further changes.

[tamlin]

As supertackyman has demonstrated, there are almost always lots of ways to achieve any effect in Photoshop.

I don't think, in a case like this, that there is necessarily anything wrong with desaturating the image to achieve the black & white conversion, since the ultimate aim of the process is to demonstrate the transition between colour and monochrome within the same image. However, when it comes to creating a fully monochrome image, simply desaturating is almost always not the best choice. As kokopedal has pointed out, successful colour-to-black & white conversion is all about manipulating the red, green and blue channels to get the right effect based on the tones and contrast in the source image. Photoshop provides two "one-click" B&W functions, Desaturate and Grayscale, but they both have their limitations. Desaturate gives equal weight to Red, Green and Blue channels (33.3% each), which means that something like a deep blue sky would be rendered a wishy-washy grey colour. Grayscale is marginally better, in that it emphasises the Green channel and diminishes the Blue channel (the actual values are Red:30%, Green:59%, Blue:11%), but this is not configurable and is obviously not the best choice in every case.

Manipulating the channels via a channel mixer adjustment layer, as described by kokopedal, is usually the best option, although if you have CS3, there is a new Black & White adjustment layer available which gives you even more control and includes some useful presets. Finally, there are a number of 3rd-party plugins available (such as Alien Skin's Exposure and Photo Wiz's B/W Styler) that give you even more granular control over the whole process. (I have to admit that, as a veteran of old-fashioned wet-film photography, I love B/W Styler with its little development-bath icons!)

Phew! That's a bit of a mega-post, but I hope it's helped a little.

[supertackyman]

Originally Posted by kokopedal

Also rember that if you use the history brush instead of a layer mask you probably will loose the ability to go back and make further changes.

I'm probably really wrong here since I havent bothered to use this option ever because it seems too confusing, but isn't that what the non-linear history option is for?

if im wrong, feel free to school me. I wanna learn as much as possible