Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Pattern fills for your Excel 2007 charts

Excel2007 black and white pattern fills for charts Pattern fills for your Excel 2007 charts

In Excel 2003 and now in Excel 2010 , there are pattern fills which you can use to fill chart bars so your charts print just great in black and white.

Unfortunately the same feature was removed from Excel 2007 – wtf? I have no clue why but it was but it has to be a very silly thing to have done.

If you are using Excel 2007 and you need to use pattern fills with a chart you are out of luck – well not really – you just need to read the rest of this tip because I can tell you how to put the fills back into Excel 2007.

To begin, download this handy add-in: http://officeblogs.net/excel/PatternUI.zip

The zip file contains a single file patternUI.xlam which you need to extract and place somewhere you will find it easily and where it won’t get deleted by accident. You could make an Excel add-ins folder for it, for example.

Once you’ve done this, open Excel 2007 and choose the Office button > Excel Options > Add-ins and from the Manage dropdown list, select Excel Add-ins and click Go. This opens the old Add-ins dialog from earlier versions of Excel. Click Browse and locate the .xlam file that you just unzipped and placed somewhere safe. Select it and click Ok. Ensure that the PatternUI option appears in the Add-ins available list and that it is checked and click Ok.

Now create an Excel chart. Once you have you chart, click on the data series to fill with a pattern – if you have a single series plotted then select just one of the columns at a time. Select the Chart Tools > Format tab and notice that you now have an option called Patterns available. Click the Patterns option and select a pattern to apply to the currently selected chart series or column. Click on each series or column in turn and apply a pattern to it. When you are done, you can print your chart as usual.

Installed add-ins are managed automatically by Excel so you will find that the add-in will still be there and accessible next time you use Excel.

If you are using Excel 2010 you don’t need this add-in as the pattern fills are back where they should have been all the time.

Excel black and white pattern fills for charts Pattern fills for your Excel 2007 charts

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:55 am1 Comment links to this post

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Winter photography tip #1 – B&W

winter1 Winter photography tip #1 – B&W

Most digital SLRs and point and shoot cameras can capture black and white images. Winter is a good time to experiment with this feature because of the general lack of color.

Find and enable this feature on your camera and then head out looking for suitable subjects.

winter2 Winter photography tip #1 – B&W

This early morning scene shows the mystery of the branches lit by a streetlight against the dark predawn sky.

Because you will not be capturing any color from your images, look for a scene that shows the contrast between light and dark elements. You may also find that foggy scenes where everything is not only by nature monochromatic but also biased towards mid tones is a great option for black and white photography.

Another topic which can be rendered interestingly rendered in black and white is texture and repeating elements – the lack of color will enhance the texture and draw attention to the repeating elements.

winter3 Winter photography tip #1 – B&W
In this image the texture and contrast between the rough wood and the metal letters is more apparent when captured in black and white.

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 2:19 pmNo Comments links to this post

Friday, November 25th, 2011

Craft great Black and white images in Lightroom

opener1 Craft great Black and white images in Lightroom

Most of us know we can convert and image to black and white in Lightroom by simply pressing the letter V. However, for the exact same image, your version of Lightroom might give a very different result to my version of Lightroom. The explanation is that there are two settings available for black and white conversions in Lightroom.

I’ll show you what these are, how to configure the one you want to use and how to quickly switch between them.

Lightroom black and white step1 e1317686230583 Craft great Black and white images in Lightroom

With a color image on the screen in Lightroom’s Develop module, press the letter V to convert it to black and white.

Open the B&W panel – it’s called Greyscale in Lightroom 2 – and check out the color sliders.

Lightroom black and white step1a e1317686256700 Craft great Black and white images in Lightroom

Depending on the preferences that you have set, the sliders might all be set to zero or they might show a black and white adjustment tailored to the image itself which Lightroom calls Auto mix.

The auto mix adjustment applies an auto exposure adjustment to the image as well as a conversion that maximizes the distribution of the grey tones in the image. This is customized for the image so every image will be given a custom adjustment much as you will get if you click the Auto Tone button in the Basic panel. Notice the subtle differences in the histograms in each of the adjustments here.

Lightroom black and white step2 e1317686276303 Craft great Black and white images in Lightroom

Whether or not you see this Auto mix applied to a black and white image is controlled by your Lightroom preferences. To see these, choose Edit > Preferences (or Lightroom > Preferences on the Mac), select the Presets tab and there’s an option there which reads “Apply auto tone mix when first converting to black and white”.

If this is checked you will get the auto tone mix applied to the image, if not, you will see a black and white adjustment where each color is given the same adjustment value of zero.

Lightroom black and white step3 e1317686289526 Craft great Black and white images in Lightroom

Regardless of which setting is in place you can switch between the two in the B&W panel.

If an Auto mix has been applied, hold the Alt key (Option on the Mac) and you will see an option Reset Black and White Mix. Click this and all the sliders will be set back to zero.

Lightroom black and white step4 e1317686303375 Craft great Black and white images in Lightroom

On the other hand, if your sliders are all set at zero, click Auto to apply the auto mix adjustment to the black and white image.

Step 5

You can further adjust the black and white regardless of whether you have an auto mix applied automatically to it or not by adjusting the sliders.

Lightroom black and white step5 e1317686316931 Craft great Black and white images in Lightroom

You can also select the Target Adjustment Tool and drag on an area of the image to adjust whether it is light or dark. Dragging downwards will darken it, dragging upwards will lighten it.

 

 

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:53 amNo Comments links to this post

Monday, May 24th, 2010

Step 11 Photo-editing workflow – Getting to black and white

black and white Step 11 Photo editing workflow – Getting to black and white

Some images look much better in black and white than they do in colour.

Increasingly photo editing programs are shipping with very good tools for converting to black and white. These allow you to select which portions of an image become black and which become white which is necessary when you want to differentiate between colours which have the same intensity such as green and red values which would, otherwise, be converted to the same shade of gray.

In Photoshop Elements, choose Enhance > Convert to Black and White and select a style from the list at the left of the dialog. These include Infrared, Newspaper, Urban Snapshots, Scenic Landscape, Vivid Landscape and Portraits. While the names suggest the type of image they are well suited to it is a matter of personal preference as to which you use.

Once you have chosen the image type you can select from options at the bottom of the image to adjust the various colours to darker or lighter shades of grey. You can also select the more or less contrast options to adjust the image contrast.

When you have a result that you like, click Ok.

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:12 am2 Comments links to this post

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Photoshop: High Impact Sharpening

after Photoshop: High Impact Sharpening

There’s a lot been written about sharpening your images and traditionally when you sharpen you’ll choose a low radius value. In fact, Photoshop will let you choose really large radius values when sharpening even though, for correct sharpening what you need is a Radius of around 0.5 – 1 for a sharp image and just a little larger for an image that lacks sharpness.

before Photoshop: High Impact Sharpening

So what is the value of being able to select really large radius values? The answer lies in a technique known as high radius low amount sharpening. It’s a way to add a huge visual impact to your images.

To see it at work, choose Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. Reduce the Amount to around 30 and push the Radius value up very high. You’ll need to keep the Threshold amount very low.

highradius Photoshop: High Impact Sharpening

What Amount does is adjust the amount of sharpening so you don’t want a lot of this type of sharpening. By setting the Radius to a high value you’re pushing the sharpening halos away from the edges in the image into the image content areas so that everything is being given a significant contrast boost.

The Threshold setting is an amount representing the difference between pixels on the edges that you want to effect. It works the opposite to how you might think it would work – a small value gives you much more impact than a large value. So a value of 1 or 2 up to 10 is sufficient.

Once you have a high Radius and low Threshold value set, adjust the Amount to suit your taste.

While this feature works really well on color images particularly busy color images, it also gives black and whites a really big shot in the arm.

blackAndWhitelondon Photoshop: High Impact Sharpening

And while you’re in Photoshop, know that this is the only place you can apply this fix. You cannot do this in Lightroom or in Camera RAW. The reason is that both Lightroom and Camera RAW allow a maximum radius setting of 3.0 and here, because we want to crank up the radius really high, Photoshop is our only option.

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:00 am1 Comment links to this post

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

Excel – print charts in black and white

bandw 786330 Excel print charts in black and white
Although your Excel chart might look great in color on the screen, if you’re printing to black and white or printing in color and planning to reproduce the charts in black and white you might be disappointed with the final result. Light green, light blue and light orange all look very different on the screen but are indistinguishable in black and white.

So, when your chart is destined for reproduction in black and white, set it up so it is guaranteed to be readible. To do this, select each series or data point by clicking on it, right click and choose Format Data Series (or Format Data Point)> Patterns tab > Fill Effects > Pattern and use a grey or a black and white pattern. Repeat for all the series and save before printing. The chart is guaranteed to look good when printed.

For more tips and tricks and helpful Office columns, visit Projectwoman.com

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 10:59 pm2 Comments links to this post

Wednesday, November 21st, 2007

Metro – Paris

metro 753882 Metro Paris

This was one of my favourite shots of the Paris metro stations. It was a throw away shot – I just took it walking past because I loved the bikes around it and there weren’t many people around.

I dumped most of the color in the photo as it just looked so good when you look at the blacks and whites in it.

I duplicated the background layer and turned the top layer into a black and white using the new Photoshop Black and White adjustment layer which lets you select which direction to take each colour into. It’s way more sophisticated than anything we’ve had in the past. Then I adjusted the opacity of the layer a little to show some of the colors from the layer underneath. The result is an almost ethereal photo. I’ve put it on a white tee shirt at CafePress in my store if you like it and want to wear it.

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 12:33 amNo Comments links to this post

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

5 Hot ways to make grayscale images in Photoshop

There are lots of differnt ways to convert a photo into a grayscale image and each of them offers different benefits such as speed or the ability to customise the results.

Here are five great ways (and one cool extra tip) for making a grayscale image in Photoshop:

(Hot tip) Before you convert an image to black and white, adjust it to ensure there is a good tonal range in the image. Choose Image, Adjustments, Levels and make sure the markers are under the ends of the chart. Adjust the midtones slider (the middle one), until you have a good result. An image with good contrast and a pleasing tonal range will give better results in the steps that follow.

Grayscale – Version 1
The simplest method of converting to Grayscale is to choose Image, Mode, Grayscale. When you do this, you create a grayscale image and color cannot be added back into it unless you convert it back to a color mode. To do this, choose Image, Mode, RGB Color if you plan to do more work with the image. Convert to CMYK color mode only if you intend to send the image for commercial printing.

Grayscale – Version 2
A RGB color image is made up of three color channels Red, Green and Blue. These channels are grayscale images displaying the relative amount of that color in the image at any point. To see the channels, display the Channels palette and click on the channel to view, hiding the others. If you like the grayscale representation of a particular channel display it, hide the rest, and choose Image, Mode, Grayscale and you’ll be asked if you want to discard the remainder of the channels – this turns the current channel into the grayscale image. Answer Yes to do so. To work on the image again in color, choose Image, Mode, RGB Color.

Grayscale – Version 3
Another method of converting an image into grayscale image but which retains the RGB color mode is to choose Image, Adjustments, Hue/Saturation. If you select the Master channel and then drag the Saturation slider to the far left, you’ll remove the color from the image by desaturating it. However, because it is still RGB Color you can add color back without needing to alter the mode.

Grayscale – Version 4
The Channel mixer gives you the opportunity to tweak the final grayscale representation by using more or less of the colors from the image. Choose Image, Adjustments, Channel Mixer and click the Monochrome checkbox. Now adjust the Red, Green and Blue sliders until you get a result you like. Ideally, you should ensure that your percentages add up to 100% although this isn’t a hard and fast rule.

Grayscale – Version 5
One situation you may encounter is where you want to convert a single layer into grayscale but leave the other layers in the image in color. In this case, choose the layer to convert to black and white and choose Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Hue/Saturation and enable the Use previous layer to create clipping mask checkbox and click Ok. Move the Saturation slider to the far left and click Ok.

So, there you have it – more ways to convert an image to black and white than you ever thought possible?

For more tips and tricks and helpful Office columns, visit Projectwoman.com

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 7:01 pmNo Comments links to this post