Photoshop question

[Sbrem]

I have an old bitmap, half-toned image that I want to lighten, so I open it in PS. It's a bitmap, so I take it back to Grayscale, then RGB. With either Levels or Curves, I make the change, but when I click OK, it doesn't change. What am I missing here?

Steve

[Homer]

curious - why are you going from greyscale to RGB?  did you try flattening it?

[mimosatexas]

what homer said.  shouldnt need to change from grayscale to rgb, and make sure its flat with no transparency anywhere as that will mess with photoshops curves/levels sometimes.  you should visibly see your changes as well (asusming you have preview checked) and if it isnt changing it could be some other issue...

[3Deep]

Dam Steve, I'd love to help you, but normally it's you helping me...make sure nothing locked

[Sbrem]

It's a bitmap tif, meaning, there are no grays, just solid black halftone dots on a white background. (When brought into Illustrator, you can color it any color in your pallet, great for showing a true proof with actual dots.) Since it's a bitmap, it needs to be covered back to grayscale for the Level or Curves tool to work. When that didn't work, I took it to RGB to see if that would make a difference, but no, I click OK after making the adjustment and it looks the same as when I started. It thinks it did it, because you can undo it, but it didn't do it. Dan, your a PS expert, any ideas?

Steve

[Sbrem]

I figured it out; once converted to grayscale, it need's to be ever so slightly blurred, or there are no grays to adjust, that fixed it.

Steve

[Dottonedan]

I'm hoping I understand you correctly...in thinking that you are not understanding that the bitmap (SOILID HALFTONE) cannot be adjusted"to be lightened....unless you were to make it a greyscale and blur the image.  I don't think you want it blurred, but you cannot reverse engineer a pre-halftoned image with good results.  I mean you can, but but the results would not be as controlled as you might like. My guess is that other parts would be too far blurred.

[Dottonedan]

ya beat me to it.

[zanegun08]

Rather than blurring, I just decrease the size of the image, and then re-enlarge it which probably has a similar effect to blurring and then you can adjust the levels and re-bitmap the image.  You will lose some details but I've had good results doing this if the art is sent already bitmapped.

I have one to do today where there is a color rosette halftone that I need to have grayscale to make a 1 color bitmap that I'll use this method on.

[Sbrem]

It's an auto body Frame straightener, printed as a left front, and I'm taking that left front and reducing it further to fit in a space with a lot of other sponsors. Pretty much why I wanted to adjust it. It was 300 ppi to start, so as I said, back to grayscale, .6 Gaussian Blur, just enough to allow me to make it lighter; I lost some image, but since it's for what it's for, it's OK. Thanks all.

Steve