B&W TV Effect- Giordan on Graphics

Black & White TV Effect

As if we don’t get enough TV in our lives, now we have to read about it in graphics columns too. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in front of our old black and white TV, squinting to make out the barely recognizable figure of Space Ghost as I strained to hear the cartoon dialog over the hiss and static. Those were the pre-cable days of the mid sixties you understand, and on some days when my older brother worked his magic with the coat hanger antenna, we could even pull in more than the standard two channels we were accustomed to.

Pardon my digression...needless to say that this effect is a bit nostalgic for me. The idea is that we're going to take an image and filter and colorize it to create the effect of a glowing black and white TV set. This effect can be very useful for giving a graphic or documentary feel to an image, and can lead to interesting animations as well.

As you check out the first step or two, those of you who know Photoshop may wonder why I'm not using the Halftone filter to create the line effect. For my tastes, the filter applies lines that are a bit too thick unless your image has a lot of resolution. Since this leaves out most Web images, the solution is to create the lines by hand, which you will see as we press onward...

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