Hello Monks!

I've been a graphic artist for 10 years; I'm a programmer more as a hobby then anything else (and a bit for doing web-based stuff).

The formula posted above for colorTV to BW is correct to the best of my memory, but it doesn't represent the "best" conversion. It represents a conversion where the fewest colors will be "lost" (no contrast).

In reality, making each image look its best is something best done by hand. For example, in photoshop, you can use "convert to greyscale" or you can specifiy in the RGB channel mixer the percentages of each color to use in producing your greyscale image.

Many images actually look best with a Green % as high as 70%. I've seen a few that look great with Green at 80% (fairly rare).

I'm not sure this helps much ... as I'm basiclly saying that its difficult to get great greyscale from random color images in an automated fashion. If a group of images are similar (all daytime landscapes) you can probably find an ideal % set up by hand, then batch them.

# theAcolyte