Helmet_of_Poe
Active member
Here's a cool trick to get (usually) better looking and printing grayscale images from CMYK or RGB images. This works best on darker images when you're concerned about losing detail in mids and shadows. It involves extracting the Lightness layer from a LAB color image, which is often a better grayscale than just going to Image > Mode > Grayscale.
1) Convert your image to LAB color; go to Image > Mode > Lab Color
2) Open your Channels Palette and select the Lightness Channel
3) Now change to grayscale with Image > Mode > Grayscale
What I do most often is open my CMYK or RGB image and make a Duplicate of it (Image > Duplicate), and view both copies side by side. Now I convert one to grayscale the conventional way, and I convert the other using the LAB method. Almost always, the LAB version is better, especially at maintaining detail in the mids and shadows. For images that are already very light and blown out, you'll probably like the conventional method because the LAB method will lighten the images even further.
You've got nothing to lose by trying both methods, running a proof and picking the best one.
1) Convert your image to LAB color; go to Image > Mode > Lab Color
2) Open your Channels Palette and select the Lightness Channel
3) Now change to grayscale with Image > Mode > Grayscale
What I do most often is open my CMYK or RGB image and make a Duplicate of it (Image > Duplicate), and view both copies side by side. Now I convert one to grayscale the conventional way, and I convert the other using the LAB method. Almost always, the LAB version is better, especially at maintaining detail in the mids and shadows. For images that are already very light and blown out, you'll probably like the conventional method because the LAB method will lighten the images even further.
You've got nothing to lose by trying both methods, running a proof and picking the best one.