greyscaling?

To create a grey scale bitmap in photoshop I have been selecting image → adjustments → black and white.

Is this the correct way to create a grey scale bitmap for bump mapping. I just want to make sure I’m using the correct technique before I proceed to make anymore bumpmaps.

Thank you

Re: greyscaling?

There’s many ways to convert a colour image to grayscale in Photoshop, all useful for creating bumpmaps. Image>Adjustments>Desaturate is probably the most commonly used.

Re: greyscaling?

I usually turn down the saturation and then adjust either Contrast/Brightness or Levels to the point where I have the level of detail in the bump map as I want.

Re: greyscaling?

Ah righty… thank you. Just want to make sure I’m doing things in the right manner

Re: greyscaling?

The sharpest way to do this is by using a gradient map on your image. First step is to make sure your colors are on default by pressing shift-D. then on the layers tab go to “new adjustment layer” and pick gradient map. Then just flatten and save as. It will be better than just desaturating the Pix.

Re: greyscaling?

thank you very much, that was simple enough. Do these different methods of greyscaling really make a great deal of difference to the overall bumpmap? if so can anybody explain why?

Re: greyscaling?

A bumpmap isn’t simply a greyscale version of the diffuse map. You wan’t to pick out the details you want to appeared raised. There isn’t *one* correct way of doing it. It depends texture to texture.

Re: greyscaling?

try gimp (free) and go to filers > map > bumpmap and play around with the settings a bit. U stille need to desature first but that easy in gimp