convert to b&w in PSE a la Russell Brown

I followed the link to outback photo from the previous post on this subject and tried out the steps on an image; however, I found the "filter" layer had no visible impact once I had desaturated the colours in the "film" layer: It stayed the same gray :confused:

(I ended up adding a separate colour filter to negate the dull effect)

Kids doing a craft
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3484/...e34190cb68.jpg

Thots?

I think many filters are color based and will there have little to no effect if the pic is desaturated ... This one looks slightly sepia BTW, which I think works out nicely.

G

Looks to me like the linked article skipped one key element, that being to vary the opacity of the filter and film layers to get the desired effect. If you leave the opacity of the top layer at 100%, of course you won't get any effect from the filter layer! Same goes for the filter>color layer. You'll just have one dull greyscale layer sitting on top, hiding everything beneath it.

For kicks I tried this approach out in PaintShoPro and the only way I could get it to adjust was to cut the opacity of the top layer, adjust the filter layer, and then convert to greyscale. The results were somewhat hit and miss. Corel handles this differently in X2. Basically the same system, only automated with real time results displayed as you make the adjustments.

Thanks for the info about the opacity. I've been adjusting this in my layers and found that it has a big impact on the B&W effect. I don't know why I didn't think of this before since I always adjust this on my colour images, but let's just blame it on the article instead of the user :D