Garden photos to grayscale/black and white/BW+1

Recently I've been discovering PhotoShop (CS6) further and more precisely, the grayscale conversion techniques. Each approach offers distinctive differences even though they all convert in to grayscale. Here's what I found:

 For this particular image, I used the red, green, and blue channels to pick one channel to use, then I edited it slightly more with the channel mixer adjusting the red green and blue source channels.
I suspect that this photo looks second best of the three. It seems slightly too dark in the background to like very much. I realize now that it needs a green tone down for an ideal image.

This photo is definitely my least favourite of the bunch. I resulted in this by usage of the black and white button that gives you the channel mixer to adjust. However this channel mixer is different then the one mentioned previously. This channel mixer gives the user the option to adjust reds, yellows, greens, blues, cyans, and magentas!
Despite all these options, it still looks awful unless you're going for a garbage look. I dislike how the flower looks burned and crisp like it was baking at 5130 degrees.

Very ironically this is the photo I prefer although I used the grayscale converter located in image/mode. This choice gives you no say in what comes out the other end. After one presses the button then photoshop will poop out what ever. I admire the appearance because of the range of black and whites. The last two have been too light or too dark, this one is similar to a combination of the previous.

This is the black and white + one colour photo. The photo that is basically the best looking back and white/ grayscale combination with one other colour. I removed the black and white layer partly to get the flower's colour out, I also used a filter to get the yellow much brighter and vibrant. I believe this works well because the flower is to the side a bit thus it's not too boring in the middle. That is all.















Thus photoshop has many choices for grayscale and how you get it, use whatever feels best.

Realistic chess piece drawing

This drawing was created to capture realism, movement, rhythm, and contrast.

Compared to the realistic drawings that you can see any time on google images, this one is not too special. I do believe that people will understand that this is a chess piece especially with the chess board helping out there. However I do not think that people will understand that there is a sword under the piece because it's pretty arbatrarry.

The movement aspect of this drawing is created because the tilt on the chess piece that makes it seem that the piece is going to fall, or being lifted from the board. Since the chess piece is the vocal point on this image, the eye will move down/right following the sword and then see the cartoon holding up the realistic drawing and examine the other cartoons.

In the rhythm category, I believe it's lacking, because other than the alternating black and white rectangles, I can't see any pattern that relates to rhythm.

Contrast is something that I think is very well because I was drawing what I saw instead of what I think is there. The shading started with the chess piece then I used relatively the same area of shading for everything around it, then I put in the darkest darks I could get and worked my way downward. When I was taking the picture, I made sure to use enough lighting so it could be seen well, and not too much so that it wouldn't cause glare.