two-tone faces

[pardicity3]

<edit>Arrrr!!! I was sure I posted this in the Graphics and Multimedia section....ahh, now I just feel dumb. Mods, do your thing. Gar, sorry for this!</edit>

I don't know if that was a good title or not, but here is what I am trying to do. I want to convert a person's face (or any object, it really doesn't have to be a person) to just black and white. I don't want to just go gray scale. I want to have it look something like this picture here:
http://www.iowawireless.com/phones_motorola.asp

I have tried just desaturating the picture then using brightness/contrast to get the look, but that results in a pixelated image most of the time...any good ideas on how to execute this technique. I know I didn't do a very good job explaining...sorry for that :(

[mouse]

Try using the threshold tool maybe.

[Feyd]

Desaturate your image, then adjust the Levels until you get a good looking blend of black and white (as contrasting as possible). You may even need to go in with a brush and smooth things out if the pic looks rough. Then you can use a Gradient Map to get your look, or a color adjustment layer, or just a duplicate layer that you've color tweaked. The main thing is to get a good portion of color seperation from black and white, and to get the black and white to be as black as possible and the white to be as white as possible (without losing the focus of the image).

[pardicity3]

Thanks for the replies there. I found adjusting the threshold to work best. I don't like working with levels as I have absolutley zero understanding of them. I did find that if I did a little threshold action then just did a filter>blur>blur it produced a desirably image with smooth edges. Very nice indeed.

[bradyj]

Just a note:

If you are check out flaming pear (http://www.flamingpear.com) they have a filter that will turn any image into B&W -- but it'll control the fade from white to black (and vice versa) to a nice halftone dot that is really clean. It's a simple way of doing it that makes your images look like a smooth screen print.

Also, you could turn your image to grayscale -- then go to the filters > artistic > cutout. Then choose a level of 2 for colors, and it makes a very clean B&W image, but no halftone dots.

[BloodXero]

i think il just explain levels for you since it is very useful and powerful.

in the top section each vertical line of the graph is a darkness value in the image and the higher the bar in that place the more of that darkness value there is. the black arrow is the dark input. anything that is to the left of the black arrow placed on the graph is going to be turned to the darkness of the black arrow on the small gradient like thing on the bottom. so anything to the left of the black arrow on the graph is going to be turned to the darkness of the spot where the black arrow is on the gradient. for lightness its the same but slightly backwards. anything to the right of the white arrow on the graph is going to be turned into the darkness of the spot for the white arrow on the gradient at the bottom.

if this isnt a good description of it i can walk you through it on a instant messanger. ive got trillian so you can talk to me on these or on an IRC channel if that is better:

AIM - ironbob88
MSN - bloodxero88@hotmail.com
YAHOO - napalmisveryfun
ICQ - 256638187

just talk to me on there or here if you need further explanation.

PS. dont email me at the hotmail account ... i never check it. email me here: ironbob@swbell.net