Colour reduction

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bruce1951
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Colour reduction

Beitrag von bruce1951 »

Sorry colour/color!

I'm trying to do some watercolor images. (Photos into water color type paintings). I want to reduce the number of colors in the photo before converting to a painting. Think I'm still too full of Christmas brandy and I can't find a simple way of reducing the number of colors in an image.

And why is my Tools/Color/Count Colors greyed out?

Regards
bkh
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Re: Colour reduction

Beitrag von bkh »

bruce1951 hat geschrieben:And why is my Tools/Color/Count Colors greyed out?
Probably because you are working in 16 bit or 32 bit colour mode. Switch to 8 bit colour depth first, otherwise there are just too many colours. Btw, also Reduce Colours also only works in 8 bit mode.
bruce1951 hat geschrieben: Think I'm still too full of Christmas brandy and I can't find a simple way of reducing the number of colors in an image.
If you are down to 8 bits colour depth, try Tools/Color/Reduce Colors … (and make sure that you choose "Nearest Colour" as the reduction method).

Btw., rather than to reduce the number of colours, try "Adaptive Soften" to reduce the amount of detail, or have a look at Filters/Blur/Context Blur which does an even better job creating painting-like effects (it's definitely great for oil painting effects, haven't tried it for watercolour images yet).

Cheers

Burkhard.
bruce1951
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Re: Colour reduction

Beitrag von bruce1951 »

Thanks Burkhard. That's what I was looking for. Pity though about not being able to 16bit. I checked on the file I was working on and it had 'only' 797363 colors!!! :(
I did forget to ask about the greyed out 'reduce colors'.

Never ceases to amaze me what PL has hidden away.

regards
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greenmorpher
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Re: Colour reduction

Beitrag von greenmorpher »

bkh hat geschrieben:
bruce1951 hat geschrieben:And why is my Tools/Color/Count Colors greyed out?
Probably because you are working in 16 bit or 32 bit colour mode. Switch to 8 bit colour depth first, otherwise there are just too many colours. Btw, also Reduce Colours also only works in 8 bit mode.
bruce1951 hat geschrieben: Think I'm still too full of Christmas brandy and I can't find a simple way of reducing the number of colors in an image.
If you are down to 8 bits colour depth, try Tools/Color/Reduce Colors … (and make sure that you choose "Nearest Colour" as the reduction method).

Btw., rather than to reduce the number of colours, try "Adaptive Soften" to reduce the amount of detail, or have a look at Filters/Blur/Context Blur which does an even better job creating painting-like effects (it's definitely great for oil painting effects, haven't tried it for watercolour images yet).

Cheers

Burkhard.
Or maybe just get Topaz Adjust as a plug-in then use what it serves up as your first approximation.

Cheers, Geoff
bruce1951
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Re: Colour reduction

Beitrag von bruce1951 »

Thanks Geoff. I'm trying to reduce colours before I use any plugins. Plugins use all the colours where as I want them to work with less colours to start with. Just something I'm playing with.

I have a client who wants more 'artistic' results so I've gone down the 'simplified' water colour route.

regards