Skewed Grayscale

[EJ]

Hi people,

I have a pencil drawing of a cave entrance which I want to use on the cover of a book that I am publishing.

I have scanned the drawing and can bring it to black and white and find the contrast is too high. I can also grayscale it with much the same result.

What I want is to have the darkest colour equivalent to about 70% black (or other defined value). Ie to grayscale it so that it is not white to black but white to 70% black.

Can I do this in XX5?

Thanks

PS. I know this may be a raster question but I particularly want to do it in XX if I can.

[angelize]

Hello EJ have you tried the brightness levels dialogue?

[handrawn]

Hi

another thing you can try is adjusting the contone dark color

if you have the 'right click on color: show menu' [options>view tab] enabled then with your bitmap selected you can right click one of the % blacks on the color bar to change your black

[there is also the contone light color which you might find useful for the white]

in theory you can use the color editor for this, but I find it a bit 'temperamental' with contones

however the advantage with the color editor is that you can make up your own shades of black - you can always save these as named colors and then use the right click menu method if you have difficulty getting the dark contone to behave in the editor...

[gwpriester]

Or, apply Flat Mix or Stained Glass transparency and adjust the transparency slider until the image looks right.

Then create a bitmap copy, True Color (not True Color + Alpha)

[EJ]

Hi Guys,
Thank you for your suggestions. I am sure I replied to you but somewhere along the line it must have taken a left hand turn. This business of colour change is fascinating and is a great area to play around in.

Angelize,
I have tried this and it looks promising. It reminds me of millenia ago when I developed my own photographs in a dark wet room! I don't quite understand what I'm doing with the brightness dialogue but it certainly is useful. I have managed to bring out detail in the light parts of my scan that I did not know were there. It has not solved my basic problem wih B&W but maybe I need to play around more here.

Handrawn,
This will definitely fix it - thanks. Also it has allowed me to change the entire cover to shades of orange which was something I'd vaguely thought about but had no idea how to achieve.

Gary,
I have not had time to look at your suggestion but will do as soon as I have time.

My co-author has thrown a spanner in the works by suggesting that another photo and a Xara map be included on the cover. Now I am back in layout/design mode. There has even been the suggestion of a four by four matrix of 16 photos/maps. Ah, for the simple days when you could have anything you wanted as long as it was black.

I'll keep you informed.
ej