Nuisance Whites in Monochrome

[clactonian]

I'm sure I'm teaching Grandmother to suck eggs here, but I had one of those inspirational moments earlier today whilst converting a particular image to black and white. The problem was a busy background with lots of white and other light coloured items, which were far too intrusive and upset the balance of the image. Normally I would carry out the conversion and then selectively burn in those items by various means, but this often looks quite false. My solution today was to change the colour of these items before the black and white conversion to one that converted to a more neutral grey tone. The beauty of this method is that by choosing different colours it is still possible to get some variation in the background tones whilst still achieving the primary aim of getting rid of the glaring light tones.
My methodology was to select the offensive item or area (I was able to use the magic wand tool), then to select image/adjustments/hue and saturation, check the colourise box, and adjust the colour, saturation and lightness sliders to suit. Repeat as necessary, and convert to black and white by the method of choice.
Maybe that's what you all do, but I'm quite pleased to have discovered it for myself. (Smug ****** !!)

[nickjohnson]

Thanks Mike! Have to confess that I'd not come close to thinking up that one. Must try it some time

[chrisc]

I do a similar type conversion but fortunately someone has built these really neat algorithms for me that make all that work now just a click on a button...like, Light-Lights or Super Lights, or Shadow darks.

[clactonian]

Nov 19, 2013 0:56:43 GMT chrisc said:

I do a similar type conversion but fortunately someone has built these really neat algorithms for me that make all that work now just a click on a button...like, Light-Lights or Super Lights, or Shadow darks.

I take it that these are purpose written algorithms Chris, as none of the programs I possess will do the job at the click of a button.

[chrisc]

They are but all can be user generated through a series of steps. I just got tired of doing the same repetitious steps on each image when I discovered for $39 I could buy them already made and about 30 others I didn't even know existed which could also be user generated. What took twenty to thirty minutes previously, can now be accomplished with a single click.

This is what a typical edit looks like in my layers palette. Note the steps designated with colored blocks. These are the purpose written algorithms.