converting color .jpg image to grayscale

[Thomas_Crowley]

I have a color .jpg image that I want to convert to grayscale and then add annotation. Is this easy to do in Illustrator?

[Monika Gause]

That depends on the nature of your image and what exactly you want to achieve.

[Thomas_Crowley]

Monika,

I've opened the .jpg image in Illustrator. It is a line drawing. Most lines are black but there is also some color shading, e.g. yellow and orange. The shading will probably look good enough in grayscale. I've opened the Links Panel and the image appears to be "embedded". However I cannot edit individual parts of the drawing.

                                                                Tom

[Larry G. Schneider]

Select the image. Use Edit>Edit Colors>Convert to Grayscale to get what you want.

[Thomas_Crowley]

Larry,

Thanks for your help.

Tom

[DrStrik9]

Best way to deal with rastered imagery is in Photoshop. There are several ways to convert color to grayscale, with lots of control over the process.

[Jongware]

Thomas Crowley wrote:

I've opened the .jpg image in Illustrator. It is a line drawing.

Those two statements constitute a logical fallacy. A JPEG image is a bitmap, and not, in any way or fashion, a "line drawing". Therefore,

...I cannot edit individual parts of the drawing.

is because the "individual parts" of the image are single color pixels. To "edit" these, you need a bitmap editor.

It's necessary to say "edit" (w/quotes) because you will be editing pixels. Any notion of 'lines', 'planes', and 'shades' only exist in your mind, and not as physical separate objects somewhere inside the bitmap. If you think you can "select" a big black square "object" in the bitmap editor, well, that's because the software only makes you think you can (it's easy to scan for the edge of a single color filled region).

... I just felt you might need to know this.

[JETalmage]

A JPEG image is a bitmap, and not, in any way or fashion, a "line drawing".

Actually, the terms "line art" and "line drawing" have been used interchangeably in the reproduction graphics industry since long before programs like Illustrator even existed. In that context it means an original image that contains only solids, and therefore does not require halftoning, as opposed to continuous-tone (often called "contone") which does. Line art (i.e.; a line drawing) can be rendered in a raster image as easily as vector paths. In fact, any 1-bit raster image can rightly be called line art, whether it contains any continuous "lines" or not.

So when Thomas said his JPEG is a line drawing, he could be simply saying it is not an image of continuous-tone artwork or photography.

JET

[Thomas_Crowley]

JET

Thanks for your help.

Tom

[Thomas_Crowley]

Jongware,

Thanks for your help.

Tom