How to convert to grayscale

[timo.heil]

Seems like XPE has replaced common bitmap effects like color conversion!? I can only find the special effects menu. Is there no more way to convert a bitmap to greyscale except for doing it outside of Xara or with a PS plug-in?

[Charles Moir]

Yes, easy. In the XPE, select the Enhance dialog and alter the Color Saturation value to be -100. The slider only goes form -50 to +50, but you can enter numeric values, and -100 is no color.

Two other advantages over the old way is this is a reversible feature. At any point you can re-edit your picture and restore the color. Secondly these picture edits take no memory, so there's no file size overhead.

[timo.heil]

Thanks Charles!

I was already wondering why the desaturation feature in XPE wouldn't allow me to completely desaturate a bitmap!

[RAMWolff44]

Hi Charles,

You might want to consider in a future release of XPE to make the sliders go from -100 to +100 so we get the full range of desaturate/saturate.

Just a suggestion! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[Charles Moir]

Well they used to go from -100 to +100 (Webstyle does) but I found them too fiddly as most common changes to saturation (or brightness, contrast etc) are usually within +/-20 which was a relatively short movement on the sliders. So in order to provide more control for these small adjustments we just made the slider range be +/- 50 instead. The downside is that the make greyscale operation, is no longer available from the sliders.

We've got a number of possible alternatives; a) provide a 'make greyscale' button - at least that's an obvious UI, but is more space and complexity. b) make the sliders longer, and thus the whole dialog larger c) make the sliders exponential so that small movements around zero have a lot of control but that the slider values accelerate as you move towards the ends so that they still have the +/1 100 full dynamic range.

c) is my current preferred solution, but involves work that is difficult to justify in the priority of things.

[raynerj]

hi Charles,

I agree, C would be the best way to go, but is it worth the trouble? The easy way out would be an entry in the help file.

How about a poll question? See what the vocal minority thinks.

[RAMWolff44]

I too agree with the C option. I think it would be a good idea to run a poll if you think it would be logical to do so.

[brianlj]

I would certainly vote for C. Missing conversion to greyscale was almost the first thing that I noticed in XPE.

[BobInce]

Another vote for C.

SoundForge has something similar, but taking account of the amount of mouse movement: move the mouse slowly and you get small steps over the logarithmic scale, move it quickly and you get big ones. Don't do this, it is bloody awful and doesn't work. ;-)

[Shadowcat]

Surely the best solution is to have a full-range slider, and a modifier key to toggle between normal and precision mouse movements?

i.e. If you hold down (say) the CTRL key while dragging the slider, it moves in much smaller increments for precision adjustments.

This way the slider doesn't have to be any bigger, and it gives you access to the full range of values, but it also doesn't prevent you from easily making those fine adjustments without overshooting the mark.