Best way to consistently convert multiple images to B&W in Publisher?

[lineweight]

I have multiple B&W images in a Publisher document, some of which have actually been scanned in colour. So if I do no adjustment on them, they are all slightly different in tone (some of them have a sepia tone, some slightly blueish).

I'd thought that using the HSL adjustment, simply moving the saturation slider right down to the minimum would make an image truly monochrome, but this does not seem to be the case.

Is there a best-practice (or least complex) way of making all these images consistent in tone?

[MickRose]

Hi @lineweight - have you tried the "K only" button on the top toolbar?

[lineweight]

16 minutes ago, MickRose said:

Hi @lineweight - have you tried the "K only" button on the top toolbar?

I've seen this mentioned in other threads but I can't seem to find it in my top toolbar. Do I need to be in a particular persona or have something turned on?

[John Rostron]

Look at:

 

[MickRose]

Hope this helps. I think it's only in Publisher.

[lineweight]

15 minutes ago, MickRose said:

Hope this helps. I think it's only in Publisher.

Realised I had to activate "show context toolbar" in the view menu.

I don't seem to get the "K only" option though, when I select an image in a picture frame.

 

[MickRose]

You need to double click it to select the image (rather than the picture frame).

[David in Яuislip]

Select the image not the picture frame and set the fill to black

[lineweight]

28 minutes ago, John Rostron said:

Look at:

 

 

Thanks. I actually was looking at that thread before starting this one.

These are the methods listed there

1) Go to Document > Colour Format > Greyscale.  Although I never use this as it's destructive and removes the colour information permanently

2) Go to Layer > New Fill Layer, fill it with white and set the layer blend mode to 'Colour'

3) Add a Channel Mixer Adjustment Layer and change the Output Channel to 'Grey'

4) Add a Curves Adjustment Layer, set the layer blend mode to 'Colour', then drag the bottom-left corner point of the curve to the top-left corner (so that it's a horizontal line)

5) Add a HSL Adjustment Layer and drag the 'Saturation Shift' slider all the way to the left (-100%)

6) Add a Black & White Adjustment Layer

7) Add a Black & White Adjustment Layer, and change the default values from 100%, to the following values to mimic method 3 (adding a Channel Mixer Adjustment Layer).  R=29.8%, Y=88.5%, G=58.9%, C=69.9%, B=11.4%, M=41.2% (for RGB 8-bit images only, the values will be different for RGB 16-bit images).  You can record this as a macro.

😎 Add a Soft Proof Adjustment Layer and set the Proof Profile to 'Greyscale D50'.  This will mimic method 1 (Document > Colour Format > Greyscale)

9) To do it via 'Layer Effects' for a layer or group.  Open the 'Layer Effects' settings.  Go to 'Colour Overlay' and set Blend Mode to Colour, Opacity to 100% and Colour to white or black.

 

Method 1 wouldn't work for me as I don't want to change the whole document, just certain images.

Methods 2-4 and 7-9 would be rather laborious to do individually for each image.

Method 5  doesn't seem to work for me. I can do this on two images and they don't end up the same tonally.

 

Method 6 does work. However, it does something to the image that I need to fix by adjusting levels. That's OK but it worries me it's introducing changes that don't need to happen. So, am wondering if there are any better approaches. If not, I'll go with this.

[lineweight]

4 minutes ago, David in Яuislip said:

Select the image not the picture frame and set the fill to black

Ok. Thanks.

This works when the image is listed in the layers pane as "(image)" but not when it's listed as "(pixel)". I'm not sure why they are different as they are both tiff files placed into picture frames.

 

[David in Яuislip]

10 minutes ago, lineweight said:

but not when it's listed as "(pixel)"

Use fx?

[Return]

You can convert the pixel layer into an image layer in Publisher through Menu>Layer>Convert to Image Resource.