Picture programs

[thurrock bees]

Hi all
im looking at taking a coloured picture and turning it in to a black and white pic for a honey label.
Does anyone know a program that does this for me?? prefer a free bie ?!

 

[The Cumbrian]

Hi all
im looking at taking a coloured picture and turning it in to a black and white pic for a honey label.
Does anyone know a program that does this for me?? prefer a free bie ?!

Almost any image processing software will do it. I use bought software but I would look at either Gimp or picassa (not use if piccassa has one or two S in it).

 

[The Cumbrian]

I have just had a look at Picasa 3 (the only one I have a copy of) to change to black and white).

Open file. Click on the Effects tab. Top left side in my copy. Near the bottom is filtered B & W. Click on that and as if by magic your pic is black and white.

Hope this helps. But I am sure others will have other suggestions.

 

[Bee-Key-Pur]

IrfanView...

 

[alanf]

I'll second Irfanview. Run it off a thumbdrive if you don't want to install. Free for personal use. Very easy and quick to use for simple jobs like cropping, format conversion, resizing and converting to greyscale (which is probably what you need).

 

[RoofTops]

I've got Photoshop Elements which can do the same. There are tricks to get the best result. You can just convert the image to greyscale, which I guess is what most of the free programmes do, but to get the best results you probably need to play around with the intensity for different colours. For example, making blues darker than reds. The exact balance depending onwhat sort of scene it is. Photoshop Elements can do this.

If you get stuck PM me and I'll have a go on your pictures if you wish.

 

[victor meldrew]

Hi all
im looking at taking a coloured picture and turning it in to a black and white pic for a honey label.
Does anyone know a program that does this for me?? prefer a free bie ?!

Check your settings on your camera . most have a 'black and white' option !
Failing that Paintshop pro will do it !
VM

 

[The Cumbrian]

The OP did say he preferred free software neither Paintshop nor Photoshop Elements are free.

 

[Brosville]

If you're running Windoze, Irfan View is excellent, but can be a bit daunting for the beginner - Picasa is good and simple to use, and if you want something that'll give Photoshop more than a run for it's money (and is completely free and far more intuitive), go for "The Gimp".

Buy software? -what a quaint old-fashioned idea (smug Linux user!)

 

[Stephenw]

Photobucket does it as well as storing our pictures and then you will be able to access them anywhere

Steve

 

[Hombre]

If by chance you have a Linux box, then Imagemagick is installed by default and from the command line type:

convert <input> -colorspace Gray <output>

Where <input> and <output> are the filenames. Type conversion from png to jpg etc can be affected by using the appropriate file extensions on the input and output. All very clever and FREE.

 

[alanf]

If by chance you have a Linux box, then Imagemagick is installed by default

Mostly true, and Imagemagick is available for Windows, Macs and most Unix variants too. Nothing comes close if you have 200 photos to convert every month.

The OP didn't specify which OS was in use. On a non specialist forum you sort of assume that means a variety of Windows and they're looking for something they can a point and click with. Being really picky, server oriented or lightweight Linux distributions don't always include Imagemagick by default, although it's often an optional package...

 

[Hombre]

I'm spoiled by SUSE Alan. Don't know much about the Windows and Apple implementations, but know of them. As you say, great for a little bit of bash batch work.

 

[BeeJayBee]

If you use Windows all you need to do to convert to mono is make a copy of the original and open it in the Windows Photo Gallery.

Click on "Fix" and a panel will appear on the right. Click 'colour' and three sliders will appear, slide all three to the left and the image will lose colour. You will probably need to adjust the brightness and contrast a bit after you've done that - click the 'exposure' button.

The programme will automatically save what you've done, so it's important to use a copy, or you'll lose the original.

Almost all image viewers have some inbuilt, basic, editing capacity these days.

 

[thurrock bees]

ive used open office which is free and have done the coversion to B and W, just need to sort my printer software out now, thanks all for the replies and help

 

[Mike a]

Paint.Net - Excellent programme and a big upgrade to the original, best of all its free and able to cope with massive pictures. Click the link in the upper right side of the page ~ Paint.net_v3.5.10