Monochrome conversions

There are many ways to achive a monochrome image from a digital colour file. These are some of the ones I've used.

Before trying most of these conversions you need to get the colour image as good as you can with regard to colour balance, saturation and contrast; maybe the saturation and contrast can be stronger than you normally use for a colour image.

For the easiest conversion from a well sorted colour file I recommend Virtual Photographer, a free programme from www.optikvervelabs.com . download the zip files and open as a PS plug in. Intuitive to use with lots of effects.

In PS the seemingly useful images>mode>greyscale gives flat results which need a fair bit of tweaking.

A far better method is to use the channel mixer. Image>Adjustments>Channel mixer. Check the mono box. You can adjust the mono effect by using the channel sliders. For a reasonable starting point try Red +130 Green 0 Blue -30. To begin with keep the total of the channel values to 100. Also when starting it's advisable to only modify two of the channels.

As you progress you will find you can get some nice effects by ignoring this advice; you may also want to try readings in all three channels. These readings are starting points.

A method I use a lot is to open a RAW file in a conversion programme, see page 6, correcting the colour file to the way I want and then using the saturation tool to desaturate the file. This is saved as a RGB 8 bit tiff which is then toned etc in VirtualPhotographer. The image can also be saved as a 16 bit especially if you intend doing a lot of manipulation or tone mapping the image as described here .

There are many other ways of achieving a monochrome image some good, some not so good.

Infra-Red conversions are popular and are covered here.