Channel Mixer

If you recall yesterday's post, there was a lady, who was, well...picking up after her dog. In color the photo was just drab. There were just too few colors in the photo.

Tip: When there are too few colors in your photo and/or boring colors, switch it to black and white.

How do you do that?

You could just desaturate (Image>Adjustments>Desaturate). But a better way, I think, is to do this:

1. In Photoshop use Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Channel Mixer
2. Click okay in the New Layer dialog box.
3. Click on Monochrome in the Channel Mixer dialog box.
4. Tweak the slider bars till you get good contrast.
5. Use Layer>Flatten Image

To find out why you do it this way (and what all this stuff means if you don't know), make sure and pick up a copy of my book.