No shades of grey

chahncer

chahncer

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33
Edit My Images
Yes
N.B. You will see grey in these images because they are considerable reductions, the originals are just Black and will print beautifully from a cheapo Laser printer. (that was a bonus I bought one for £30)


I tried for several years to get an image that was; an impression and just black. I started with the Threshold tool and failed but then each time I tried I got a little nearer, gave up and started again a few months later.

Eventually using Ps7 and Ps13 in tandem I arrived at this one, my first success.

48071728447_17a0714815_b.jpg


It's an old quarry almost completely overgrown, it rained when I got there only showers though, this image was made when the sun shone briefly through the trees.

J
 
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I love it.

And I don't often use those words. It very much appeals to my imagination.

Will there be more?
 
Hello Ian,

Thank you for your nice comment very good of you. I will post more it's one of those techniques that takes time and if it doesn't work I have to start again from the beginning but, it often suprises me.

J
 
This is the top of Ravensnest escarpment the sun pours down from the left only in the Spring and Autumn. There are 138 steps cut into the hill to get up to it and a knee deep bog at the bottom and it's always worth the climb though. The bog got me only once it's one of those that you can't see until your in it :)

TP10.jpg

I wondered if this would work with so many solid objects and not that many leaves. Like most projects I learn as I go along and when this emerged after a couple od days trying I began to realise that my small window into the idea was beginning to broaden out.

J
 
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Not so long ago this area was covered in collieries and railway lines. No trace remains to day the only clue to something being there before is the hieght of the trees they still look fairly new.

FitL02.jpg

I liked the curve of the path and the trees and the fence all leading my eye into the image. I thought it was a perfect place to pose and used a quite dramatic one to create a juxtaposition against the curve.

J
 
Quite simply the joy of the first warm sunshine in the early Spring, at the bottom of a steep escarpment sheltered from the worst of the winds and trapping the early sun. And there small plinth like mound ideal to pose on and to express the joy I feel and the 'oneness' I experience when posing.

I have felt this for many years and recently came across some words about Zen, amongst them 'oneness' and everything being not quite as it seems to be, I realised with a bit of a jolt that my Only Black images are representations of this idea.

FF02.jpg

Cheers
 
Have you looked at software packages that have an Adaptive Thresholding function. This varies the threshold based on an area of neighbours (usually the size of this area can be changed as a parameter). I work in machine vision, and its something we often use, where the lighting is non uniform, and will even allow objects to be thresholded out (create binary image) as the background changes. Might be very useful for this project, I don't know of any consumer packages, as the tools I use are within some quite complex (and expensive, image processing libraries), but I can point you in the direction of a tool that has a demo mode which you can load images into, and export from (and give you some instructions to help get you started). PM me if interested
 
Hello David,

One of the things I found in my online searches was a Japanese web site that did what you describe, sadly it was inneffectual. Using my steps I am able to vary the effect considerably. What I like about doing stuff like this is starting out with a little window into it and then that broadens out to encompass all sorts of images in different ways. There are many ways to achieve the same thing even in Ps. I found this online after a search for Adaptive Threshold: http://www.programmersought.com/article/3896388106/ sadly the results they achieve are rubbish all highlights gone, very similar to the Japanese site. The fact is that each image is different and needs to be treated in differing ways, it's one of the joys of editing.

Thank you for your concern though it's very good of you to spare the time to explain.

Cheers - J
 
chahncer said:
Hello David,

One of the things I found in my online searches was a Japanese web site that did what you describe, sadly it was inneffectual. Using my steps I am able to vary the effect considerably. What I like about doing stuff like this is starting out with a little window into it and then that broadens out to encompass all sorts of images in different ways. There are many ways to achieve the same thing even in Ps. I found this online after a search for Adaptive Threshold: http://www.programmersought.com/article/3896388106/ sadly the results they achieve are rubbish all highlights gone, very similar to the Japanese site. The fact is that each image is different and needs to be treated in differing ways, it's one of the joys of editing.

Thank you for your concern though it's very good of you to spare the time to explain.

Cheers - J
Click to expand...

Thats ok, pleased you have something that works for you, the toolset I use has an Adaptive Threshold technique and a Local Adaptive Threshold Technique, the latter works very well especially with quite large local areas (eg 100-200 pixels), FYI a description is below (if you do think you would like to try then I'm more than happy to point you at a demo version of the software)

Threshold Adaptive

Toolbox: Preprocessors
Supported ROI(s): Rectangle, Annulus, Torus, CircleArea, Polygon, UserMask,
Supported image type(s): MONO8,
Description: Adaptive Threshold. Calculate threshold based upon the average pixel value in the ROI.

Adaptive Threshold applies thresholding to a gray-scale image using thresholds based on local pixel values. Each threshold value is set to the local mean pixel value plus an offset threshold. The local mean is calculated over the complete ROI.

The method of calculating the offset is specified by the threshold method. The offset value is determined using the threshold.

When the threshold method is set to absolute, the threshold value is simply added to the local mean value to determine the threshold values. In the other modes the threshold parameter is used as multiplying factor to determine the threshold offset value. In the MeanMin mode the difference between the local mean pixel value and the image minimum pixel value is multiplied by the threshold value and the resulting offset value is added to the local mean. In the MeanMax mode the difference between the image maximum and the local mean is multiplied by the threshold value to determine the offset. In the StdDev (standard deviation) mode the offset is determined by multiplying the standard deviation of the pixel values in the neighborhood by the threshold value. Note that the standard deviation is calculated over the same neighborhood as the local mean value, while the minimum and maximum used in the previous two modes described are the minimum and maximum over all pixel values in the ROI. In Histogram mode, the local threshold is chosen between the two dominant local histogram modes such that within histogram mode, variance is minimized. In that mode, the threshold must be set to zero.

If invert is FALSE, pixels above the threshold are turned 'on'. If invert is TRUE, pixels below and including the threshold are turned off.

Parameters:
• "threshold method" [Enum]
Values:
"Mean (0)"
"MeanMin (1)"
"MaxMean (2")
"StdDev (3)"
"Histogram (4)"
• "threshold" [Double]
Default value: 0
Minimum value: 0
Maximum value: 255
• "invert" [Bool]
Default value: 0 - False
Outputs:
• None


Threshold Local Adaptive

Toolbox: Preprocessors
Supported ROI(s) :Rectangle, Annulus, Torus, CircleArea, Polygon, UserMask,
Supported image type(s): MONO8,
Description: Local Adaptive Threshold. Calculate threshold based upon the average taken within smaller rectangular samples inside the ROI.

Local Adaptive Threshold applies thresholding to a gray-scale image using thresholds based on local pixel values. Each threshold value is set to the local mean pixel value plus an offset threshold. The local mean is calculated over a rectangular region (neighborhood) around the pixel, whose size is specified by the local width and local height parameters.

The method of calculating the offset is specified by the threshold method. The offset value is determined using the threshold.

When the threshold method is set to absolute, the threshold value is simply added to the local mean value to determine the threshold values. In the other modes the threshold parameter is used as multiplying factor to determine the threshold offset value. In the MeanMin mode the difference between the local mean pixel value and the image minimum pixel value is multiplied by the threshold valueand the resulting offset value is added to the local mean. In the MeanMax mode the difference between the image maximum and the local mean is multiplied by the threshold value to determine the offset. In the StdDev (standard deviation) mode the offset is determined by multiplying the standard deviation of the pixel values in the neighborhood by the threshold value. Note that the standard deviation is calculated over the same neighborhood as the local mean value, while the minimum and maximum used in the previous two modes described are the minimum and maximum over all pixel values in the ROI. In Histogram mode, the local threshold is chosen between the two dominant local histogram modes such that within histogram mode, variance is minimized. In that mode, the threshold must be set to zero.

If invert is False, pixels above the threshold are turned 'on'. If invert is True, pixels below and including the threshold are turned off.

Parameters:
• "local width" [Integer] - local region width.
Default value: 10
Minimum value: 2
Maximum value: 10000
• "local height" [Integer] - local region height.
Default value: 10
Minimum value: 2
Maximum value: 10000
• "threshold method" [Enum]
Values:
"Absolute (0)"
"MeanMin (1)"
"MaxMean (2)"
"StdDev (3)"
"Histogram (4)"
• "threshold" [Double]
Default value: 0
Minimum value: 0
Maximum value: 255
• "invert" [Bool]
Default value: 0 - False
Outputs:
• None
 
Hello David,

Photoshop has been the simplest, fastest and most intuitive piece of image editing software since they gave it away in 1989 as BarneyScan XP.
Why? Because it has the finesse to make art and to prepare an image much as I would have done under my enlarger light.
Why 2? If t wasn't the above then the professionals would have dumped in short order.

Cheers - J

Maybe you could start a project thread of your own with example images as I have done here,
 
Hello all,

I was told about this site Tagree: https://tagree.de/ one is asked to submit stuff just three images, it's an arty photography place and also lists paintings and such. In for a penny I thought and sent three of my Only Black pics in earlier on today.

Got an email this evening to say that my pics have been accepted and would be on the site over the weekend.

Then I got another email saying they are on the site now: https://tagree.de/amazing-shots-tag...otography-from-photographers-around-the-world

I feel quite pleased. "Well I would wouldn't I" to misquote Miss M. Rice-Davies

J
 
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