articles/Landscape/themonochromespecial-page6

The Monochrome Special - part 6 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

by Tom Lee Published 01/04/2009

Using Adjustment Layers

If you use the Black and White Adjustment Layer you have essentially the same tabs as the RAW file to Grayscale converter plus a couple of other options. A number of pre-sets are available called, for example, High Contrast orange which is useful if you have an idea of the conversion you require. Even if you run out of knobs to twiddle with the available sliders, you can activate the target adjustment mode button and then pick up a colour from the image and drag the mouse to the right for lighten and to the left for darken.

We stumbled upon a useful method of exploiting this feature which has nothing to do with monochrome. We had been trying with some difficulty to create a mask to enable us to balance a picture in a panel with another in terms of background tone. The image shown is of a Great Tit gathering sheep's wool from a barbed wire fence. The tangled wool presents a problem that is also common in making masks for frizzy hair. At first sight it looked easy, the green and white looked quite separate. In practice we had a lot of trouble getting a clean border between the wool and the green background.

Using the Black and White conversion as an adjustment layer and selecting the background green with the dropper, we darkened the background against the wool. We then applied Calculations in Multiply mode to enhance the effect and create a new channel. This channel was then painted to remove the bird and barbed wire and then used as a layer mask to adjust the Hue, Saturation and Brightness to match up the two images.

ABOVE: The difference is quite subtle but important for the overall harmony of a qualifications panel. On the left the tones of the background do not match, on the right they have been adjusted for a better match while leaving both the Great Tit and the wool unaltered.

BELOW: The annotated screen grab shows a Black and White Adjustment Layer in action. The layer shown at A brings up the pane shown at B where the colour selection icon is clicked to active and then moved to point C in the image. Now, when the mouse is dragged to the left as indicated, the greens darken and highlight the difference between the green foliage of the background and the sheep's wool on the barbed wire. This is the starting point for making and refining a mask.

• The Monochrome Special page 1
  
• The Monochrome Special page 2
  
• The Monochrome Special page 3
  
• The Monochrome Special page 4
  
• The Monochrome Special page 5
  
• The Monochrome Special page 6
  
• The Monochrome Special page 7
  

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