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Guest Claviateur

Need your advise please on this one

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Guest Claviateur

Hi,Here is a photoreal texture in black and white I want to make as terrain texture in FS and it works perfectly. However it is in black and white and now I am at the stage of puting color on it... As you can see I placed a small image in color showing a portion of the city and I am looking to make the black and white phototexture has colors similar to this color aerial photo portion of that same city.Do you have any advice or tip on how I can put colors on it to make it look true to life without loosing the details in it like roads, fields, streets etc? I use Photoshop Thanks Michel

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I know that Photoshop has a very nice feature which allows you to tint the whole scene in different shades or colours which you could play around with and achieve the desired result.Cannot remember the exact name of the function unfortunately.Shez


Shez Ansari

Windows 11; CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K; GPU: EVGA GEFORCE GTX 1080Ti 11GB; MB: Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 5; RAM: 16GB; HD: Samsung 960 Pro 512GB SSD, Samsung 850 Pro 256GB SSD; Display: ASUS 4K 28", Asus UHD 26"

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Guest

looks like a bit of a tough photo for my technique cuz its all so close in value. I like to color a layer in green (for example) and then adjust the background value to a range that looks nice to me with about 50% transparency, you could try that with some greens and browns...then select the roads from the b/w layer and copy them to their own layer and lay them on top...that's my basic coloring process.Bob B

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Guest Claviateur

Thanks gentlemen for the tips, actually Ive been using photoshop since a long itme now for my graphic design job but never used it to color a black and white aerial photo. So I will try to use your tipsThanks :)Michel

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OK checking my home comp shows that the function is called 'Variations' and it is in image>adjustments>variations(right at the bottom). You must be in RGB mode of course.Photoshop 7.0 but the same in 5.5.Shez


Shez Ansari

Windows 11; CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K; GPU: EVGA GEFORCE GTX 1080Ti 11GB; MB: Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 5; RAM: 16GB; HD: Samsung 960 Pro 512GB SSD, Samsung 850 Pro 256GB SSD; Display: ASUS 4K 28", Asus UHD 26"

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Hey Bob,I've used the "select the roads" to a separate layer method of b&w coloring as well, but I've never had the patience to follow it through completely - thus ending up with only major roads. Its an extremely tedious process (and sometimes imprecise enough to have to "fix" selections) the way I do it using the magic wand and similar selection tools to add to the selection.I haven't colored a b&w sat pic in quite a while, but I'm wondering if you have any special technique that speeds up the process? I'm always interested in new PhotoShop tricks and if you have one for this type of work, I'd love to hear it - specially if it is somewhat automated. This same type of work needs to be done when selecting water areas for an alpha mask using the two-slice method and the same tedium is involved if lots of little streams or rivers are present in the aerial.Thanks,http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

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Guest Claviateur

Hi Shez,thanks for the tip, yup I have to try variations, I used to use it for other tasks but i will try it for this one. Actually my known techniques for colorizing b&w images give a 50's like photo wish will look odd in FS :) I will try the variations to seeCHeers!Michel

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Hi Elrond, I have to admit that the selection of roads and water is the fiddleist part of my work. The colors are instantaneous cuz you can write an action to automate it.For town areas I find the quickest way can be (depends on the contrast in the original image) to set the threashold for the wand a bit higher than you might consider, maybe up to 20-25, and click on non-contiguous...you'll get somewhat sloppy blocks, but you can clean them up more quickly with a negative mask rectangle, faster than trying to set the original mask carefully.Course that won't work if you have significant image content at the same value as the road areas.I bounce back and forth wanding or using the variable selector rope...wish I could offer a better "aha" but that's where its at for me.B

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Thanks Bob, I'll try a higher threshold next time I do this.One idea I had but haven't tried yet is to terrascene the same area... But set all textures to white outside the road textures. That way you could layer it under, masking out the white. As long as you can line them up properly, that should be an almost fully automated way. Of course, unless you have access to special data, only the US need apply. I haven't tried the method yet, but may in the future. If you get a chance to, I'd love to hear your or anyone elses feedback.Thanks again for the tip, http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

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Salut Michel,Using PhotoShop, I use a very easy technique for coloring black and white pictures - with the Color Balance option, simply add (or subtract) colors for the different highlight, shadow, and midtone settings. You may want to adjust the levels first.To make it all even easier, I have first reduced the RGB image to indexed colors (adaptive)and then, once it is colored, I save the color table. This color table can then be applied to other black and white images for quick results.Here is Gulfport colored by this method - the colors blend in with the surrounding default textures.http://ftp.avsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3d54471d51157885.jpgAnd here is a close-up:http://ftp.avsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3d54478f52b888ec.jpgBest regards.Luis

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yep, that's a great idea...I'd done some terrascene for this area some time ago, it might be easy to find that file, and experiement...I'll look into that...might just be a fine idea.B

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Paint Shop Pro has an export and import palette feature.I grab screen shots from FS2002 and Terascene, save the palette, apply it to the black and white bmp and then play with the individual colours in PhotoShop till I get the black and white to match.http://members.rogers.com/jkanold/one.jpgThe area under the airport proper was a poor black and white aerial.http://members.rogers.com/jkanold/jimlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

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Guest Claviateur

Hi Luis,That result looks wonderful!! I am very impressed and I must try your method. It looks very sharp and fits very smoothly in FS terrain. I really apreciate your tip!! I will try it for sureThanks :)Michel

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Hello Michel,You do not seem to allow your e-mail address to be seen when you send a message throught the AvSim system, so here is the reply to your question.Coloring black and white pictures is not straightforward at all. I basically just followed the instructions in the PhotoShop help file - Making Color and Tonal Adjustments.It has really all been trial and error for me. Since Flight Simulator textures are 256 color images, I first reduce my picture to indexed color - adaptive. Then, I add some green, some red, some yellow in the midrange. I try to get the trees to look a nice shade of green. The mixture of these colors might give a brown or beige in some parts of the picture as well.Then, I would do the same with shadows and highlights. Usually, the result was not satisfying, but after playing with this for about 10 minutes, I would put it aside until the next day. I kept coming back to it for a few days, making different adjustments and finally got some very good colors, as you saw.I have applied this color table to other pictures - sometimes it works well, sometimes not. But, so far, I have been able to color black and white pictures using this method - everything from desert colors of Lake Havasu, Arizona to sub-tropical Florida.I tried to apply some of my color tables to the picture that you posted, but it gave bad results. Perhaps you could send me a small part of the original picture so that I could try again.Or even better, just give me a link to the source of your picture and I shall get it there. I get my pictures from Microsoft's server of U.S. Geological Survey aerial pictures.Once the color table has been defined, it then becomes very easy to apply it to other pictures and get quick results.Best regards.Luis

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Guest Claviateur

Thanks so much Luis I will email you the link were you can get the photoreal image and will include my email address as well. Sorry I did not notice that my email was not activated to be seen in the private message so I will send you all that in an emailCheers!Michel

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