Skewed Grayscale

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.

Hello EJ have you tried the brightness levels dialogue?

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...

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)

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