Weird "Flatten Image" Behavior making me crazy!

Hello all. I'm a design professional, and consider myself pretty fluent in Photoshop (nearly 10 years), but this behavior has me baffled.

I have a grayscale image with threshold effect that I want colorize. I add a hue/saturation layer, check 'colorize', adjust till it looks good.

Here's the bit that's been driving me nuts: when I flatten the image, the colorization disappears and I'm left with the greyscale again.

I've tried it many different ways: Performing the hue saturation on the layer directly (no adjustment layer) - this looks like it's going to work, i.e. the image gets colorized when the preview box is checked in the effect dialog, but when I click OK, it returns to grayscale!!

I've also tried adding a solid layer and setting it's blending mode to color - same exact behavior - returns to grayscale when flattened.

Can anyone offer any help with this?! I'm really stumped at this point. If you want to have a look at the file, I uploaded it to <http://fthatjob.com/flush_big.psd> (~2.8 Megs)

Same thing happens in PS7 + PS8 (CS)

And here's more weirdness I just discovered - if I shrink the file from it's current 3072 x 2048 to, say, 640 x 427, and then do the flatten, everything works as expected!!!

Anyone have a clue what's is going on here?

-G

I'm not sure I follow you exactly. I assume you mean that you have a desaturated RGB image, since you cannot add a hue/saturation adjustment layer to a true grayscale image. I tried to duplicate this on a 2628x4047 pixel image and got the expected results, i.e., the colorization held.

I do know that some of the forum regulars have had problems when flattening very large images, in the neighborhood of hundreds of megabytes, but I have not heard of this problem manifesting itself on files as small as you and I are working with. Maybe I'm missing something in your description... if so, please bear with me and explain it again. Also, if you can zip your psd file so it's a little smaller, I'll download it and have a look.

Thanks Ho -

Yes, you understand correctly, the only difference is the base image is 1 bit b/w after a threshold adjustment, not desaturated...

The zipped file is at <http://fthatjob.com/flush_big.zip> (~1.1 Megs)

Best,

-Gabe

Ahh, I see. I tried this trick with the threshold applied to the image I used a moment ago and got the same results you are getting. I don't know if you've been able to do this in the past, but by definition, a 1-bit image is just that, on or off, black or white. If you look at your image at 100% view (actual pixels) you will see that the colorization effect is NOT being applied, it only appears to be in a smaller preview. I don't know why the adjustment appears to stick with a smaller pixel dimension image. I would be curious to see how it would print.

Try this: apply your colorization, select all, copy merged (cntrl + shift + c), then paste to a new layer. See if that does the trick.

EDIT: it seems that technique only works if you make use of the Lightness slider in Hue/Saturation. Otherwise, the results are the same: an image with no color. And, if you use the lightness slider there is no need to do a copy merged, it will flatten with the color intact.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

Eureka!! Thanks so much, Ho, it's really appreciated. The discovery that it's just an obscure preview bug might not get me the effect I want, but at least I can go to bed and not feel like I'm going crazy!

Very strange behaviour though, and truly weird that it works as I had expected it to on the smaller image.

Thanks again, take care,

-gabe