Need to reduce images to only two colors

[beholder]

Hello guys,

I am placing logos on a gradient layer, and I want them to look semi-transparent, blending into the gradient background.

The problem however is that the logos come in different sizes, colors and shapes... they are anything BUT uniformed when you try to reduce them to a simple black and white logos to fit into the red of the gradient.

I don't know if you follow me here.. the idea is that all the logos would be of one shade (red). if I convert the symbols to black and white or whatever, I still have different shades of gray that affect how the final outcome will be like. Any ideas how I make them all have the same color?

[BoltBait]

Try this plugin:

http://paintdotnet.12.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=4367

I think you're looking for Halftone dithering.

[drakaan]

Actually, if you're drawing logos, and need to be able to resize them and have full color and 1-bit (B/W) versions, I'd probably use a drawing tool, rather than a painting tool.

Especially when is comes to scaling the output for high resolutions, vector (.svg, .eps, .emf, or .ai) file formats are going to work better, since you don't lose detail.

Additionally, when you use those types of programs, it's very simple to copy the logo, and change the properties of the fills and borders of the objects in the drawing to whatever color they need to be.

If the logo is heavily graphical to begin with, and drawing it by hand (or with simple shapes or curves) isn't an option, you might take the image, convert it to black and white, and adjust the contrast and brightness until you have no shades of grey. *Start* with a quad-VGA (1280 x 960) size at least, if it'll be used in printed materials (with a vector/drawing initial size won't matter, but with a raster/image it matters a lot).

[beholder]

Ok guys, here is what I have so far:

(the real image is higher quality of course)

So far what I've been doing is to hand-pick the logo itself (with magic wand and the other selection tools) and than invert the image, making the actual logo is white as possible. I then put the logs above the gradient layer, using overlay mode. I am considering not even having the white filling and instead filling the selection with an *opposite* gradient, which will create an illusion of depth (I will cut out the selections of the logos from the gradient layer, exposing the opposite layer below, if you follow).

the problem is still with the logos. So far the logos are pretty simple and only have one color. I crop out the logo and use sepia on it, and then adjust the hue to make it as white as possible. It's going to get harder with more complex symbols and logos that have more than one color... I will have to really reduce the whole logo to two colors only.

I tried to use halftone, but it is still too "sensitive" and it picks up the shades in between as a pattern of black and white pixels. What I need is some kind of a tool that reduces the whole image to two colors, maybe something with a sensitivity variant.. I think Photoshop has something like that, I think I saw it used.

At any case, if you have better ideas as to how to pick up the logos (including the different colors) and get the selection, please let me know. I can post another example of the more complex logos if you want.

Thanks for reading all of this!