Does anyone know of some good guide lines or links or tutorials for reg medium or Photoshop to start with to develop your ability to work with and identify different values and tones?
Because color can be hard at first, so I was told to try to keep a limited palette since this would make things easier.
Any ideas please?
bc

I've done few things to get value. I really don't use many guides for the most part.

Since you are talking about Photoshop, the first thing is to turn your color picture into grayscale. It's hard to get values from color if you not used to drawing from color.

If you don't have Photoshop, you can get transparency that is shaded in blue. Put the transparency over the picture, and this will wash out the colors. You should be able to see which colors can be perceived as dark grey, or lighter grey.

Lastly, try squinting. This is if you are working from a live model. The darker values should show up as shapes as opposed individual colors.

Then you can start developing your values.

Lastly another thing is to practice by creating a value scale from light to dark. You can probably find a reference on a value scale to work from.

Cheers.
Gilbert

Check out the first post in this thread about making a value scale/measurement too. I have a bunch of these (I made then in photoshop and printed out many copies!) and I use them all the time.

Ernest, thanks again for pointing old threads that are very useful.

Another tip for finding values, is using the solarizing option in picasa or in paint shop (which I have) or the equivalent in other picture programs. It helps define the large areas of values.

Gilbert,Ernest and Nathalie,
Thanks a lot for you help here much needed sorry took so long to get back but I am learning a lot of things.But please remember I really do appreciate your input.
I too thank you for pointing to a very useful thread on this topic.

Gilbert great idea about turn my photos into gray scale I either use Image/Adjustments Hue and Saturation and desaturated it or Image/Adjustments Channel Mixer and click on Monochrome and the you can use the sliders to isolate what gray tone you want more.
bc