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Can anyone help with this?

A friend has a samsung digimax a4 and has managed to set it to take
black and white images. He would like these to be in colour.

I have loaded these into Photoshop Elements and the images show as RGB
colour even though they display in B&W.

Is there any way of changing these to display as colour images?

Thanks.

On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 10:12:16 +0100, Mark <>
wrote:
>A friend has a samsung digimax a4 and has managed to set it to take
>black and white images. He would like these to be in colour.
>
>I have loaded these into Photoshop Elements and the images show as RGB
>colour even though they display in B&W.
>
>Is there any way of changing these to display as colour images?

I'm afraid not, the colour information is no longer there.

You can convert colour to B&W because this just "throws
away" the extra information - the colour - but you can't
convert the other way.

--
John Bean

Mark wrote:
> Can anyone help with this?
Nope. (O:

> A friend has a samsung digimax a4 and has managed to set it to take
> black and white images. He would like these to be in colour.
>
> Is there any way of changing these to display as colour images?

Sadly, had your friend done a bit of research about shooting b&w
digital he would have learnt:

1. Once you have converted a color image to b&w and not kept the
original colour information (which is what the camera almost certainly
has done by hime telling ti to shoot in monochrome), the only way to
get the colour back is to either re-shoot the image, or hand paint
it...

2. Digital colour images can be easily converted to black and white by
a number of means, the quickest being 'desaturation'. There is,
therefore, no good reason in 99.9% of cases to *ever* take a b&w image
on a colour digital camera.

3. To rub it in further.. (O;, by shooting in colour, you have in fact
effectively captured three images in b&w - each one as if it was
through a Red, Green, and Blue filter respectively. You can then, with
post-processing on a computer, use any combination of those images to
create a b&w masterpiece (image not withstanding..) And anyone who
shoots b&w will know that red and green filters in particular are very
helpful things!


Sorry, but them's the breaks..

Mark wrote:
> Can anyone help with this?
>
> A friend has a samsung digimax a4 and has managed to set it to take
> black and white images. He would like these to be in colour.
>
> I have loaded these into Photoshop Elements and the images show as RGB
> colour even though they display in B&W.
>
> Is there any way of changing these to display as colour images?
>
> Thanks.

One of the most important lessons to learn in digital photography is
NEVER save an edited image with the same file name as original, i.e.,
overwrite the original. Always save edited image to a new file name.
Save the original and make derivatives of that, but always with new
file name.

"John Bean" <> wrote in message
news:...
> On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 10:12:16 +0100, Mark <>
> wrote:
>>A friend has a samsung digimax a4 and has managed to set it to take
>>black and white images. He would like these to be in colour.
>>
>>I have loaded these into Photoshop Elements and the images show as RGB
>>colour even though they display in B&W.
>>
>>Is there any way of changing these to display as colour images?
>
> I'm afraid not, the colour information is no longer there.
>
> You can convert colour to B&W because this just "throws
> away" the extra information - the colour - but you can't
> convert the other way.

Unless your camera saves RAW files when it actually appears to make no
difference!

I have an EOS 20D and took some B&W (using the camera setting) pictures.
They appeared in B&W on the back of the camera, but appeared in colour using
the Canon software on the computer unless I saved them as B&W in some other
format, e.g. TIFF or jpeg!

Andrew

In article <>,
Mark <> wrote:

> Can anyone help with this?
>
> A friend has a samsung digimax a4 and has managed to set it to take
> black and white images. He would like these to be in colour.
>
> I have loaded these into Photoshop Elements and the images show as RGB
> colour even though they display in B&W.
>
> Is there any way of changing these to display as colour images?
>
> Thanks.

Yes you can EASILY get them back IF and only IF he shot then in RAW
format. If he shot in jpeg, then no, the images were converted to jpg
in the camera and the jpg file only has monochrome info....If he shot
RAW, then load the RAW file and in color mode change from B&W to RGB and
bam, your color is back.

JR

JR wrote:
> Yes you can EASILY get them back IF and only IF he shot then in RAW
> format.

T'was a good suggestion, JR, but I'm pretty sure this camera does JPG
only. It's a 4 Mp p&s.

Are you going to come back and comment, Mark?