Figure Study Tutorial

This tutorial converts a color image to black and white and creates an image using the green and the blue channels blended together. The size of the original image is 1536 x 2048 pixels.

While the three vases were certainly colorful, their forms were more interesting than their hues. Since the luminosity of each vase was roughly the same, simply desaturating the image or converting it to grayscale would have made all three vases the same dull shade of gray. Since the hues were so varied, any conversion to black and white based on extracting a channel would to be dramatically different depending on which channel was extracted, making it likely that the best result for this image would be some combination of channels.

To begin, the original layer was duplicated with Layer > Duplicate Layer so that there would be a copy of the original layer for future use. Often the most detail in an image is in the green channel, so the newly duplicated top layer was selected to be used to extract the green channel. In Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Levels, the Channel dropdown was changed to "Red", and the rightmost of the Output Levels fields (which initially had "255") was changed to zero. Then the Channel dropdown was changed to "Blue", and that same Output Level field was changed to zero, before clicking "OK". The result can be seen in the leftmost image below:

Green Channel	Remove Color	Auto Contrast

Enhance > Adjust Color > Remove Color was applied to this layer, to give the middle image above, and the rightmost image above was the result of applying Enhance > Auto Contrast. The image is what was expected - dark in the red background vase, mid-gray in the blue middle vase, and light in the green foreground vase. The green vase is a bit too light, however, and most of the detail is lost.

Blending this layer with another channel would bring back some of that detail. Choosing the red channel would likely brighten the background vase and darken the middle vase - leading to everything being roughly the same shade of gray. Choosing the blue channel would likely brighten the middle vase, leave the background vase dark, and make the foreground vase mid-gray. In addition, the blue channel is often the noisiest channel, and this image would be helped by a slightly grainier feel.

Blue Channel	Remove Color	Auto Contrast

The top layer with the extracted green channel was hidden and the bottom layer with the orginial image was selected to be used to extract the blue channel. In Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Levels, the Channel dropdown was changed to "Red", and the rightmost of the Output Levels fields was changed to zero. Then the Channel dropdown was changed to "Green", and that same Output Level field was changed to zero, before clicking "OK". The result can be seen in the leftmost image above.

Enhance > Adjust Color > Remove Color was applied to this layer, to give the middle image above, and the rightmost image above was the result of applying Enhance > Auto Contrast. This image has plenty of detail in the green foreground vase, without brightening the red background vase too much and while brightening the middle blue vase.

The top extracted green channel layer was unhidden and selected. The Blending Mode dropdown was changed to "Hard Light" to blend the two layers, and the image was flattened with Layer > Flatten Image to finish the image at right.