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Straight Desaturation Method
With desaturation you are getting rid of the color information.
Steps in Photoshop
There are two ways to desaturate an image:
- Select
- Create a new Hue/Saturation layer by selecting:
- Set saturation to -100
Here is a sample photograph converted using this method.
- Original
- Desaturation
At first glance there seems to be little difference between this method and the straight grayscale conversion or gradient map conversion.
- Desaturation
- Gradient Map
However a look at the color chart shows just how different the two methods are:
- Desaturation
- Gradient Map
All colors are converted to middle gray. The difference is more apparent in a photograph with low contrast. Notice the difference in the windows.
- Original
- Gradient Map
- Desaturation
Desaturation by itself gives very poor results. However, desaturation forms the basis for the Hue-Dialing method, which produces even better results for low contrast photographs.
For more comparisons check out the Comparison Page.