Convert to grayscale.

Black & White

You do not want to match to black and white. In terms of technical prepress, you are matching to 1 bit so you are flattening tonal detail. The result is not recognisable.

I convert the image to grayscale

Here you are matching from lightness, chroma and hue to lightness and you have tonal detail left. To do this match to the image on disk, open the image in the ColorSync Utility, select Apply Profile in the first drop down dialogue, select Abstract (for the ABST Abstract class of ICC profile) and select the canned Gray Tone ABST Abstract profile that is also available in the printing dialogue. Depending on what you have installed on your system, you may have PRTR Printer device profiles that match to grayscale. These will appear if you open the drop down list termed Output.

If you don't want to permanently change the pixels in your picture on disk, you can place the picture in Pages and change the pixels in the placed version (Pages does not link to the picture on disk but embeds the picture and applies edits to the embedded version). Finally, if you neither want to permanently change the pixels in your picture on disk or permanently change the pixels in placed copy of your picture (the copy that Pages embeds), then you can change the pixels only in the print stream by applying the ABST Abstract profile in the print dialogue.

(You will find that no two software suppliers supply the same names for the same classes of ICC profile or the same names for the positions of ICC profiles in colour matching sessions. But you'll learn to live with that -:)).

/hh

Do you know that this kind of question is responded in the Pages User Guide available for every user from the Help Menu ?

Select the picture
View > Show Adjust Image
Move the "Saturation" cursor to the left
Bingo, you will get a grey image.

It's the level zero of image editing.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE mardi 21 avril 2009 21:32:51)

Oh Thank You Yvan! I have been changing illustrations for Mac "handouts" to grayscale in the printer dialog box but this way I can see exactly what they look like before printing! A big help that I picked up from your reply and it wasn't even my question!
SJ Allan

Yvan,

That may get you a greyscale image but not a good one.

I suggest playing with the color and contrast as well to "punch" up the image.

Each photo will have stronger color elements which is what you need to target if you want a good looking greyscale image, not just a washed out color image converted.

Peter

Using the Saturation cursor is not simply getting a washed picture.
It's an efficient tool to get a good approximation.

We may easily get an enhanced result clicking on the button logically named "Enhance".

This simple scheme will give correct result for a high percentage of users.

Of course those aware of color management will be able to get better results playing with other parameters.
Alas, those unaware of color management basis will get worse results.

Pages is not designed for professionals of color so I think that my response is matching the level of knowledge of most of the users. I assume than those with color management knowledge would not ask the initial question in this forum.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE mercredi 22 avril 2009 21:37:46)

Pages is not designed for professionals of color so I think that my response is matching the level of knowledge of most of the users.

It's not a question of whether colour management is for professionals, because colour management is part of the structure of the system and not part of an addition to the system. You cannot not have ICC imaging just as you cannot not have Unicode imaging. The question is, How is ICC imaging and Unicode imaging implemented and documented?

In general, you are taught in school how a combustion engine works in order that vehicle may be propelled by fossil fuels down a road, and you are taught in school how traffic regulation works in order that vehicles propelled by fossil fuel do not collide with other four wheel vehicles, with two wheel vehicles, and with pedestrians. But you are not taught to drive a Citroën.

Similarly, what the International Color Consortium and the Unicode Consortium could choose to do, but consistently choose not to do for competitive commercial reasons, is to teach the public the general architectures of their graphic data processing approaches. For instance, Apple has no documentation at all of how a ColorWorld lets colour workgroups co-operate world wide.

/hh

Hi Henrik

May I tell you that you are a bit tiresome with your obsession upon "International Color Consortium" and so on.
We know your advice. It may be correct.
The problem is that nobody here will change Apple choices.
If you want to get changes, rant at Apple's level, not here.

Standard users ignore the existence of these structures and as there are no tools available to take benefit of them I don't understand what you are trying to do minus perhaps exposing your wide knowledge of the subject.

Now, back to the problem.
When some one ask how he may change a colored picture as a grayscale one, I feel allowed to think that it is ignorant about color management, even of the basis of colours manipulations.

I don't think that it is useful to drown them with the descriptions of high level features.
Let them experiment with the simple techniques.
When they will be fluent with them they will perhaps ask for more sophisticated tips.

When a child learn how to walk, nobody put them on a cable hanging between two skyscrapers 😉

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE jeudi 23 avril 2009 18:20:31)

Standard users ignore the existence of these structures and as there are no tools available to take benefit of them I don't understand what you are trying to do minus perhaps exposing your wide knowledge of the subject.

Hi Yvan,

I'm sorry you are hostile towards the ins and outs of graphic imaging, but from the fact that you are hostile it does not follow that there should be no effort to communicate this, nor does it follow that you should not be able to learn about graphic imaging in order that you may be communicate this.

Best,

Henrik

Henrik,

Education, a necessary as it is to civilization, must be acquired in steps. When a driver gets into a Saab, and in bewilderment asks where the ignition switch is, you don’t tell him how an internal combustion engine works. You tell him the switch is between the seats.

Walt

Walt K wrote:
Henrik,

Education, a necessary as it is to civilization, must be acquired in steps. When a driver gets into a Saab, and in bewilderment asks where the ignition switch is, you don’t tell him how an internal combustion engine works. You tell him the switch is between the seats.

Walt

It is!? So hot wiring under the dash has been unnecessary all these years?

I should have read the manual (downloadable from under the Help menu) but nobody told me to. 🙂

Peter

Education, a necessary as it is to civilization, must be acquired in steps. When a driver gets into a Saab, and in bewilderment asks where the ignition switch is, you don’t tell him how an internal combustion engine works. You tell him the switch is between the seats.

I would agree, including with the example (which was picked on MacUser UK a year ago). Not to pick nits, but the driver did not know how a combustion engine works and did not therefore know how to ask for the right place to insert the ignition key. Also the engineers put into place both colour correction and colour management at the same time, which is not a problem if you know which is which, only these engineers didn't put it into the driver's manual -:).

And thanks for the civilized line on the discussion.

/hh

Henrik,

That the Saab example was used in MacUser UK a year ago is an indication that great minds think alike 🙂 My usage was drawn from the fact that I once owned a Saab 99. (Loved it by the way.)

I know, and use, several different methods of converting Color to Grayscale. I know which buttons to push and which sliders to drag. And I have had great success in having the results printed, both on my desktop printer and by several local print shops. (I always talk to a new printer first.) But I have no clue as to what you’re talking about. It’s just a lot of mumbo jumbo to me. Impressive, but useless. If I hadn’t already known how to convert color to grayscale I still wouldn’t know. And neither would the OP, I dare say.

These forums are intended to be helpful. If a person has to ask the simplest of questions, he’s not going to be helped by the most erudite and technical of answers.

Personally, I will try to tell him where the switch is.

Peace.

Walt

Walt,

What did you think of Top Gear's take on Saab users?

Did you think it hit the mark?

Peter

btw I live in a town where Saab seemed to have a strangle hold until recent years. When I first came here I couldn't believe how many I saw on the roads.

Hard to say, Peter. I once had a service station attendant try to put water in the oil filler pipe of my '73 air cooled VW Beetle. (This was back when we had such things as service stations ... and attendants.)

But we wander afield here. Maybe I'm just too dumb to show off, but I think a question should receive an answer, not a dissertation on the underpinnings of the universe.

Walt