Normally, we use up to 256*^3 colors (remember that FF in hexadecimal is really 256 in base 10) for our JPEG and PNG images. And we use something like 256 colors for GIFs. But how many colors do we really need to paint?
I believe only 2
No shades of Gray, just Black, on white. Or it could be blue on green. Yellow on Black. just 2 colors.
Gimp has a pretty easy way to reduce all of your pictures into Black and White. Under Colors, select “Threshold”, and drag the slider until you see definition in all of the places you want. What you are really doing in threshold is selecting various regions of dark, so keep this in mind as you determine the region to blacken.
This technique of using to achieve definition of regions can be applied locally to certain regions, and then stitched together quite easily (it is after all Black on White!). If the picture is stitched, then I recommend using a plain white background layer to arrange the picture on.
I used this very technique on a picture of my face along with some brushed in “hair” for a rather unique look at how easily faces are recognized by dark regions (shadows)
Tags: Gimp Threshold, relief Gimp
