How do you add a black&white/sepia flashback visual effect?

[Mr. Onizuka]

Greetings and salutations! I've watched a couple of fan trials, and noticed that some use that visual effect for Flashbacks: they repeat a brief scene they already showed, but in a Black&White or sepia color pallete to show it's a flashback.

My question: is there a simple way to do this via the editor (dunno, using some sort of semi-transparent filter above the frame) (yup, I've no idea about image editing), or you just have to take the long way? (meaning, take all the background and sprites in those scenes, and re-colour them so they look like this)

[Tiagofvarela]

I am almost entirely positive you need to recolour the backgrounds (and characters, I guess) yourself if you wish to achieve this effect. At least that's the idea I got from researching it, and the method I'm using for my cases.

[kwando1313]

There's currently no way of doing it in the editor, but there are plans to add a filter some time in the future (thank you based css3).

Right now, you'd have to use paint.net or gimp to edit the picture.

Though, honestly, it's not too bad. It's literally just a filter you need to apply on top. Sprites are more of a pain because you need to go frame by frame, but... It's not hard. (Just a bit tedious.)

[Mr. Onizuka]

Aw, I see. Well, if you want something well done, you gotta suffer for it haha. Thanks for your answers, guys.

[Reverie]

first there was only dark
http://www192.lunapic.com/editor/?action=effect-bw
but then, there was dark with a bit of light too

[Calvinball]

In other words, the website lunapic has a great tool that can make both .png and .gif images black and white.

[Enthalpy]

Those who are interested in when AAO will support this feature can see its status on the Issue Tracker here.

This is a feature I personally want to see, and if it isn't done before then, I plan to pick this up after a I'm done get Omniscient Game working.

[TheDoctor]

Hmm, I wonder if Ferdielance might know whether or not there's an SVG filter that can do this in the meantime.

[Enthalpy]

"Image," not "filter." No matter what we do with SVG's, any approach like what you're describing is going to be simply adding two images together. With fades, this can work. We can overlay a generic fade-to-black graphic on a picture. The generic fade-to-black exists, and we get the desired effect.

Not so with a greyscale effect. What you'd need is a single image such that you can overlay it on anything, and it produces a greyscale effect. I don't believe this can be done. If you overlay a transparent grey background on a picture, you can still see the color underneath. I'd love to be proving wrong, but I struggle to believe that an image with these properties exists.

[Mr. Onizuka]

first there was only dark
http://www192.lunapic.com/editor/?action=effect-bw
but then, there was dark with a bit of light too

Awesome! Just what I needed. Thanks, Spyromed.

[mercurialSK]

SVG stuff is basically CSS, so the issue tracker thing is still it unfortunately.

edit: can't read, Enth answered it already...but yeah the only way via SVG is to use the CSS grayscale filter.