Changing Colour to Greyscale

[traceyp]

Charles

I take on board what you have said in another thread about changing colour depth etc. However, I have a need/desire from time to time to change colour work to greyscale and no matter what I do I cannot find any means of doing this with the Create Bitmap Copy dialogue box. How do I convert from colour to greyscale using X1 or is it a case of having to do the conversion in a paint package? If so, this is most inconvenient since very often, the bit that I want to change to greyscale, is work I've created in X1 or a fill provided by yourselves on the CD. Any help would be most appreciated. Many thanks.

Tracey

[traceyp]

Charles

I take on board what you have said in another thread about changing colour depth etc. However, I have a need/desire from time to time to change colour work to greyscale and no matter what I do I cannot find any means of doing this with the Create Bitmap Copy dialogue box. How do I convert from colour to greyscale using X1 or is it a case of having to do the conversion in a paint package? If so, this is most inconvenient since very often, the bit that I want to change to greyscale, is work I've created in X1 or a fill provided by yourselves on the CD. Any help would be most appreciated. Many thanks.

Tracey

[RAMWolff44]

Hi Tracey,

It's not real obvious but if you click on the White swatche and you will see the image become grayscale actually. If you click on the Black swatch you will get a negative grayscale version!!

Very neato!! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

HTH's a bit!

[Charles Moir]

Two ways of doing it;
a) As Richard has suggested using the contone feature. Just click on white or right click on black to set the light and dark colours of any bitmap (it's a sort of short-cut to colouring bitmaps. Usually a click on the colour will fill a shape and a right click will set the line colour, but for bitmaps we take this to mean set the two colours of a contone.) You can use the same technique to easily create a sepia effect. With the photo selected, just right click on the Colour editor icon on the colour line, (which would normally edit the line colour, but in the case of bitmaps lets you edit set the 'dark' colour) and now just select a dark brown colour and you'll have a sepia photo.

Or method (b): Double click the bitmap to go into XPE, select the enhance dialog and enter a value of -100 in the colour saturation field, click Accept to send it back to Xara X

Both methods just apply a temporary greyscale to the bitmap. You can get the original colour back in case (a) by left clicking and right clicking on the 'no colour' icon. In this case 'no colour' means put back the original colours. In case (b) double click the bitmap and in XPE reset the saturation back to 0 and it's will restore the colours.

[traceyp]

Richard/Charles

Many thanks for your replies but although it does work on pure bitmaps, I'm afraid that what I want to do is fill an object such as a round corner rectangle, place a fill from those supplied on the CD, apply a level of transparency and then convert to greyscale. It appears that as soon as you use a bitmap fill to fill an object, that fill is no longer editable in the way described, only as part of an object. Neither method will work on a fill once it has filled an object. So, is there another way apart from creating another identical but greyscale fill - which I would find to be more than a pain.

If you drag a fill onto a page, yes, you CAN manipulate it in the way described. However, once you've used the fill to fill an object, it is not recognised as a bitmap any longer - or am I missing something? In fact its not always a bitmap that I want to convert to greyscale since I do use pre-made vector graphics and need to see what it looks like as grayscale before taking it any further. The methods suggested only seem to work on bitmaps. So any other suggestions, please.

Tracey

[RAMWolff44]

Hi Tracy,

I just tested it, if I create a rounded corner rectangle, fill it with the bitmap fill of choice, right click on it and create a bitmap copy with alpha, double click on it and bring up XPE and type in -100 in the Colour Saturation box I get a gray scale bitmap.

Will this not work for you?? Don't know what else to suggest I'm afraid! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Charles Moir]

You use the same technique for bitmap fills. When you fill a shape with a bitmap fill, when you're in the fill tool you get fill handles that you can drag around (just as you do with a linear or circular fill). You can click on those and select colours to set the start and end colour, or just drag a colour to the fill handle end or centre points. So if you drag black to the centre fill handle of the bitmap fill your picture will be set to greyscale.

A real short-cut to this is to make sure you've got the fill tool selected and just drag the bitmap from the fill gallery (or bitmap gallery) onto the shape. This fills the shape and leaves the end fill handle selected. Now just click the white colour.

To to fill a shape with a bitmap and then set it to be a greyscale (or any contone) takes just one drag and one click (assuming fill tool is selected). Hope this is the answer this time.

Can you change the subject of this post to be something like 'Greyscale bitmaps' so other forum users can see what this thread is about? That might help some others with the same question.
Thanks.

[RAMWolff44]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Charles Moir:
.... if you drag black to the centre fill handle of the bitmap fill your picture will be set to greyscale. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Charles that is SO cool!!! WOW, I did not know Xara X1 could do this! In fact I'm not sure any other vector program can do this!! I just dragged Black to the center handle and sure enough GRAYSCALE. I tried it with the other gray tones (10% - 90%) and you get lighter tones as you go up. That is just wonderful!

Tracy, it can't get any easier than that, now can it?? http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[raynerj]

Richard,

If you click on the outer blob, you can just select which color you want for the second color. You do not have to settle on just black and white.

[RAMWolff44]

Thanks for the tip. Nice work on the code Charles, this is really neat stuff!!

Tracy, as Charles suggested, why not change the title of this thread to reflect the subject matter so others can know what's being discussed here?? http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif