Channel Mixing.

   I'd used a little Channel Mixing on the previous project but to get a better understanding of how channel mixing can effect my work here's a short explanation of what it does.

Above is a pretty straight forward shot of a Bee feeding on some Lavender, its a good image in this form with good colour contrast between the purple and the yellow plus the reds and greens in the background. It's nice and sharp and I'd be perfectly happy displaying it in this form but what would it look like converted to Black & White using the Channel Mixing controls?

In my version of Photoshop it took me a few minutes to find where the Channel Mixing controls were hidden because you can always bet it isn't where you would expect it, first I look under Edit but it wasn't here then I did find it under the Image tab.

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Above are three versions of the same image that by making small alteration within the Channel Mixing tool have produced varying effects. To produce these effects all I did was make alterations to the amounts of Red, Green and Blue by moving the individual sliders until I liked what it was doing to the image. In photo 1 the setting I used were RED -70%, GREEN +200% and BLUE -30%, by doing this I ended up with the yellow and green areas remaining bright while the purples and reds became much darker. To me the green area in the background has now become to over powering and makes the image seem unbalanced because of the strong white area in the background. For my second version I tried to resolve this problem by using the setting RED 0%, GREEN 0% and BLUE 100%, although this fixed the problem in the background the bee now appears completely black but I gained a little more contrast within the lavender. In my final version I think I've about got it spot on using the settings RED +34%, GREEN +66% and BLUE 0%, now I've removed the problems in the background which means the focus stays on the foreground while there's still good contrast between the light and dark areas of the bee and the lavender plant and flowers.

   What you can see here is what a useful piece of software Channel Mixing can be giving you the control over individual areas within the scene so that in a Black & White image you have a great amount of control over the tones throughout. This will be a definite advantage when doing my major project if I do choose to go down this path.