PRODUCING MONOCHROME IMAGES

This brief tutorial (AND THE TRAINING SESSION THAT GOES WITH IT) explores some of the ways in which you can convert colour images into monochrome images.

Note: In our club rules, a monochrome image is "any photograph containing shades of only one colour. If toning is carried out, it must be over the total photograph - partial toning and/or the addition of one extra colour is NOT acceptable in the monochrome section. Digital monochrome prints and modified monochrome prints may be entered in this section. Images entered in monochrome competitions may be processed or altered in any way as long as they remain monochrome.

This image is acceptable as monochrome	This image is acceptable as monochrome	This image is NOT acceptable as monochrome

This tutorial was prepared by Roy Killen and is COPYRIGHT. It is part of the supplementary training materials for members of the Belmont 16 Ft Photographic Club and is not intended as a complete, stand-alone instruction package.

Comments and suggestions on this tutorial are welcome - they should be emailed to Roy Killen.

THERE IS MORE THAN ONE WAY TO SKIN A CAT

If you are using Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or any similar image editing program there are numerous ways in which you can convert a colour image to a monochrome image. There is no absolute best way to do it - all the techniques are useful under some circumstances. If you are familiar with several techniques then you can select the one that you prefer (because it consistently gives you good results) or you can select one that suits the particular type of image that you are working with.

However, there is one approach that you should NOT use. You should NOT do the monochrome conversion in your camera. The reason is simple - you can always get better results if you do the conversion in your computer. This is doubly true if you record RAW files in your camera.

If you do work with RAW files (and I highly recommend that you do so if you can) you have two basic options for monochrome conversion:

1. Do the conversion in Adobe Camera Raw (or whatever RAW conversion program you are using).

2. Do the conversion in Photoshop (or whatever image editing program you are using) after you transfer the image from Camera RAW.

Each approach has advantages - as you will see from the remainder of this tutorial.

If you record your images as JPEG files in your camera you can open them in Adobe Camera Raw if you have Photoshop CS3 or later - this gives you the two options above. If you do not have Photoshop CS3 or later then your only optionis to do the conversion in Photoshop (or your preferred images editor).

MONOCHROME CONVERSION IN ADOBE CAMERA RAW

When you open an image in Adobe Camera Raw (including JPEG or TIFF images if you are using CS3 or later) you should make all the necessary adjustments in the "Basic" adjustment panel (exposure, contrast, etc) before opening the "HSL/Grayscale" panel to attempt a monochrome conversion.

When you open the "HSL/Grayscale" panel (by clicking on the 4th tab from the left) you will see this:

If you put a tick in the "Convert to Grayscale" box you will see the folowing (and the image will change to grayscale):

This indicates that Adobe Camera Raw has assessed your image and automatically decided how much weight to give to the luminance values of each of the eight colours. For example, in the above panel the blues have been left at a neutral (zero) value, the purples and magentas have been lightened (as indicated by the positive values) and all other colours have been darkened (as indicated by the negative values).

This automatic monochrome conversion may give you exactly the result you want. However, if it does not then you can adjust any of the colours (make then darker or lighter) by moving the sliders.

If you prefer to make all the judgements yourself, you can click on the "Default" option. This will move all the sliders to there central ("zero") position as shown below.

From here you can adjust each slider to change the lightness/darkness of each colour.

Whichever of the above approaches you use, keep in mind that there is no "correct" setting of the sliders - it is all up to your judgement and your preferences. You make the adjustments that will produce the effects that you want in the monochrome image. The following images illustrate this point.

Here is an image that has very definite "red" areas and very defintie "green" areas:

A monochrome conversion that darkens the "greens" and lightens the "reds" gives this result:

A monochrome conversion that darkens the "reds" and lightens the "greens" gives this result:

When you are satisfied with the monochrome conversion (and with whatever other adjustments you want to make in Camera Raw) then click on the "Open Image" button to transfer the file to Photoshop for further processing.

MONOCHROME CONVERSION IN PHOTOSHOP

If you open a colour image in Photoshop you have many options for converting it to a monochrome image. Several of these options are explained below. Whatever approach you use, the result will be that you have removed the colour information and left the luminance information. The various approaches described below provide different ways of doing this and give you different amounts of control over the process.

If we start with this image . . . .

DESATURATE

This process is simple, but it gives you no control over the conversion process.

The result is not very impressive. The colour informatoin has been removed, but the image is flat. Because the colours on the bird all had similar levels of saturation and luminance they have all been rendered as approcimatley the same shade of grey.

HUE/SATURATION

Selecting this option from the menu opens a dialogue (as shown below). Moving the "Saturation" slider to -100 has the same effect as the simple "Desaturation" process shown above.

Rather than just adjusting the saturation of the "Master" (all colours at once) you could select the colours (red, green, blue, yellow, cyan, magenta) one at a time, drop their saturation to -100 and adjust the Lightness to get the effect you wanted. This could give you a result such as the one below, but it is arather clumsy way to do the conversion.

BLACK AND WHITE CONVERSION

If you have Photoshop CS3 or later you can get more control over the conversion process by selecting Image>Adjustments>Black and White.

This opens a dialogue in which you can separately adjust the lightness of each colour. This is similar to the grayscale conversion in Adobe Camera Raw but with only six (rather than eight) colours to adjust.

When the dialogue first opens the sliders will be set to Photoshop's "best guess" - which may not be very good.

You can adjust the sliders to get the image you want. For example . . .

Note that when this dialogue is open you have the option of applying a "Tint". For example, you might want a sepia tone effect. When you tick the "Tint" box the default sepia tone is applied.

If you double click on the coloured square the colour picker opens and you can select whatever colour you want for the tone. For example:

IMPORTANT NOTE

The Hue/Saturation method of conversion (in any version of Photoshop) and the Black and White method of conversion (in CS3 or later) can and SHOULD be applied using an adjustment layer. This preserves the original colour informatoin in the background layer and gives you the option of coming back later and fine tuning the monochrome conversion.

AND THERE IS MORE . . .

Each of the approaches to monochrome conversion described above is "basic". They may produce a result that is satisfactory but you will probbably have to work further on the image to enhance it. For example, you might have to do some dodging and burning. Some more advanced techniques for monochrome conversion are described in this tutorial.

All images on this site and all documents and tutorials linked to this site are copyright.

This page last updated 29th September 2008 (RK)