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Good day. Today we are investigate the many ways to sap the color from a photograph and what the differences are between the different methods. Who knew there were that many ways? I thought it was a fairly simple progress.

Image > Adjust > Desaturate

End of story, end of game, next contestant please!

But noooooooo!

At the right is the base picture for all of these experiments, just as it came out of my Olympus D-520 camera ... well, without any color correction, anyway. I did crop the large not-yet-foliated tree whose base you can see in the background out. This gave me not only a much small picture, but one with a good deal less brown to deal with.

The picture was taken in early May 2005 at the Albany Tulip Festival, which is a wonderful display not only in Washington Park, where this photo was taken, but all throughout the city.

Control

Desat

Now we have the basic Image > Adjust > Desaturate picture. Notice that it's black and white and grey. Some people find black and white photography to be more "artistic" than color photography. I won't argue with those folks, but I do notice that the photographers who spend a lot of time putting forth that proposition also take a lot of pictures of people who don't seem to wear a lot of clothes.

I know, I know ... correlation is not causation. It's just an observation.

HueSat1

This is the tulip bed transformed with Image > Adjust > Hue/Saturation with the Saturation slider moved all the way to the left.

The question was asked, "How our your results in youhuesat compare with the result in youdesat?" Well, I'm not real good at that kind of description, so I let Photoshop do the comparison. I used Image > Calculations with GeorgeHueSat as source 1, background, and gray channel. As source 2, I used GeorgeDeSat, background, and gray channel. I used a blending mode of Difference (which worked, in this case, exactly the same as Subtract) and put the result in a New Document. The result is below.

The white part is the difference. I don't see any, either.

HueSat

Play Time

The next step involved applying an Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, with the Saturation slider moved full left. And then — follow carefully now — painting with Black to let the Red show through. Talk about counter-intuitive. Talk about cool!

Of course, something that cute could only be matched by a Bobby Vinton song to move the entire composition into the OMG, that's soooooo cloying! range. And using pink for the text color was just and added bonus.

I just couldn't stand it, so I took Janee's advice and used a black and white gradient on the photo. The results are below.

GradMap

This was pretty good. I need some more playtime with this one. But I did manage to get some reasonable experimental results out of it.

Chan

Mix

The March of the Zombie Tulips inspired me to create the March of the Luminous Tulips.

This was done with Red at +46%, Green at -82%, Blue at -120% and Constant at +92%, with Monochrome checked.

I seem to have a chronic, constitutional inability to follow even the simplest of directions. With the channels split, I chose Channel Mix from the fly-out menu on the Channels palette and swapped the red channel with the green channel. In doing so, I invented an entirely new variety of tulip, which I hereby present for the first time.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Arthur Dent.A fall-blooming variety, the blossom appears only after a long, dry summer when the foliage is nearly entirely parched. Ah! but what a color!

OK, technically neither of these fulfils the assignment.

Now you have an idea why the only course I ever failed in a long academic career was 7th Grade Art. Miss Duke wanted things done her way, and — even at the tender age of 12-13 — I wanted to do things my way. The reader is referred to the Harry Chapin song "Flowers Are Red" for further reference.

By the way, since 7th grade the only art courses I have ever taken have been at LVS Online.