Green Tones in Black & White converted image HELP!

I have a group of images I want to convert to black & white. I have read some great posts on this process. The procedure I followed is listed below.

The problem is all my printed photos have a green tint to them. Does anyone know how to correct this?

This is how I did it! (Thanks Nancy S.)
* ********************* Posted By ************************** Nancy S - 01:59am Aug 24, 2003 Pacific (#5 of 41)

1. have your image in RGB
2. create a Levels Adjustment layer above your image but DON'T make any changes, just click OK
3. create a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer above Levels and move the saturation slider all the way to the left, removing all color, click OK
image now appears as a black/white photo, but it is not, it is RGB
4. in Layers Palette, click on Levels thumbnail to bring up the histogram
where the dialog box says RGB, use drop down to select one color channel watching your image, move any/all of the three sliders
switch to the second color channel and tweak
switch to the third color channel and tweak

Better? You have a lot more control with this technique, your eye is your guide as to how much contrast etc you want to build into the image. Technically this is still an RGB image, if you need grayscale, change the mode, it won't change the image's appearance.

* ********************* Posted By **************************

cnoel,

I wonder if you still get a greenish cast if you open an image, pull up a Hue/Sat layer, keep it in the composite RGB channel, and move the Sat slider all the way to the left.?? I wonder if you set your printer to Black Only, saying it is not a color photo, what happens.

On the ones you've done, pull up the image again, get the eyedropper and sample an area which printed out greenish. If your Info palette is not visible, drag it out of the well. This will give you values for R, G and B when eyedropper is used. Best to have the eyedropper options set on 3 pixel sample, not 1. The 3 values should be very close numerically, no matter the magnitude of the value, as this will differ depending on darkness.

cnoel,
You may even be able to solve the problem outside of Elements, by "tweaking" a color slider in the printer driver, for example. The Epson driver has a color slider mode and you can even save the slider settings for use later. Your problem is not unique. There are people who spend a lot of money to remove color casts from their "B&W" prints . Here's a related thread on the Photoshop forum.
See comment #4 <http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?128@@.2ccf1e70>

:-)

Brent

cnoel,

Available on this site is a plugin for color conversion to greyscale.

When you download the Zip file, there is a readme. PSE can only use the plugin form, not the action.

edit---whoops, forgot the link

<http://webuser.rhein-main.net/grafcolor/html/rgbtogra.htm>

love the little guitar melody

Brent, that's a terrific discussion you referenced on the PS forum; gotta save that one for posterity!

Thanks!

Chuck

Yeah Chuck,
It's nice to get to evesdrop when you find people who know their stuff. There's more than a few bits and pieces in there to mull over.

:-)