January 19 Challenge
Thursday, January 19th, 2012Hi all, Happy Thursday! Carolyn here to bring you your inspiration for Challenge 19: Use a Black and White picture on your page.
I have to admit that this WAS a bit of a challenge for me as I really love color photos. But sometimes there is a particular kit that is perfect for my photo, but the colors just look horrible together. That’s when a black and white photo makes all the difference.
Here I was just LOVING Amber’s kit and wanted to smack every element in it on the page…I just love them all THAT much. So, with all those papers and elements, my picture was lost. Not anymore! Once I changed it to black and white, it was much more visible on my busy page. Here’s my layout that I had so much fun making with Just One Of The Boys by Stolen Moments and Jenn Barrette Designs:
Here’s a sweet layout from Annisa, using It’s A Boy Thing by Haynay Designs and WM[Squared] Designs:

And here’s a fun layout from Jan with a partial extraction, using Backyard BBQ by The Design Girl:

Hope these inspire you to have fun scrapping some black and white pictures. I cannot wait to see your layouts for this challenge!
For a full list of the January 2012 Bingo challenges head over to the forum here and if you want all the details about our challenge system including the prizes click here!
Happy Scrapping!
- Carolyn (calliclaire)

















Today I’m going to show you a way to convert your picture without losing the contrast and making you picture look flat. (The screenshots and directions are in Photoshop Elements 5.0.) First open up the picture that you want to convert to black & white. Duplicate the picture by right clicking on the thumbnail in the Photo Bin and selecting Duplicate. This is so you are not working on the original and accidently save over top of it. Press D to set your foreground and background to the default black and white. Make sure that the black is in the top box. If it isn’t press X to switch them.
Now go to the top of the Layers Palette and choose Levels from the Adjustment Layers menu. When the box pops up don’t change anything on it right now, just click ok. This will add a layer to your Layers palette named Levels 1.
Go back to the Layers Adjustment menu and this time chose Gradient Map. Check to make sure the Gradient map is set on black to white. If it is not click on the arrow next to the gradient map and choose the correct gradient from the popup menu. Click ok. This will give you a layer in the Layers Palette named Gradient Map 1. Just going this far will already give you a better black & white picture, but we are not done yet.
In the Layers palette, double-click on the Levels thumbnail in the Levels 1 layer. This will popup the Levels box. From here we are going to edit the individual colors, starting with red. So go ahead and choose the Red channel from the drop down menu. Grab the black (shadow) arrow under the Input Levels and slide it right. This will increase the shadows in the red channel. [IMG]http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm313/p_a_sandbulte/red.jpg[/IMG] When you think you are satisfied with this edit, go back up to the drop down menu and choose the Green channel. On this one we are going to slide the white (highlights) arrow to the left.
Again when you are satisfied with this edit, go back up to the drop down menu. This time we are going to work in the Blue channel. Go ahead and move the highlights arrow to the quite a bit to the left. Move the shadows arrow just a little bit to the right. Not every picture you convert will have the same settings, play around with the sliders a bit until you get the effect you are looking for. When you are happy with how your picture looks go ahead and click OK.
One last step and then we are done. Go to the Layers palette, click on More. From that menu choose Flatten Image. This will flatten the adjustment layers into your picture. You can also use ctrl+Shift+E to do this.
Check out the pictures side by side. The one on the left I just used the grayscale mode to convert the picture. Look how much of a difference there is in the one on the right.
Here is my page with my new black & white picture using LDrag’s Blessings of Life and Stolen Moments & Rosy Posy’s Here and Now. 
Here is a sweet one by Chel.
This one by Ophelia uses Jennifer Labre’s Full of Life and True Blue Studio’s Summer Garden Templates.
Here is one from Tamara using Amy Stoffel’s Make a Move.
Challenge reminders: -For the month of September you will receive two points for posting in this thread & in the Saturday Special gallery. You can receive an additional two points for using new Scrap Matters products; please make a note of new products in your post. And at the end of the month you’ll be entered into a random drawing that could earn you some bonus points! -You have until the end of September to complete this challenge for September MOS points or wait to post in October for October MOS points! -Remember no double dipping… layout must be unique to this challenge. -You don’t have to use Scrap Matters products, but remember your SM gallery must contain at least 50% SM product beginning July 8, 2011.







































