Adobe Camera Raw converting B&W back to colour.

Barks

Barks

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Paul
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Hi everyone,

I went for a quick wander around some local woodland this evening and I had a play around with shooting in "monochrome" on my camera's settings. I've just gone to convert and save them in ACR and it's turned them all back to colour images.

My camera is a canon eos 1000D and i'm using the ACR that comes with photoshop CS3 if that helps.

Is there a way to stop ACR doing this, or is just that the in-camera "monochrome" setting option is meaningless to ACR so it displays images as colour ones anyway?

Thanks.

EDIT: To clarify, when I start Adobe Bridge the images initially showed up as B&W but after a few seconds they all turned in to colour ones, and open as colour in ACR.
 
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Yep it does raw is the whole data file, it doesnt just record in just BW, had you shot raw and jpg, the jpg would be B+W but not the raw
 
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If you have software that came with it then it may read the in camera settings. Otherwise shooting raw over-rides the in camera preferences- you're saying give me just the raw image and so that's what its doing. As already said, shoot jpg or raw+jpg to get around it in future-or create a preset/action that you can apply that is the same effect you get from the camera. Then you can shoot with the LCD feedback and know what you can get b&w but retain the goodness of raw at the same time
 
Thanks guys :thumbs:

That's what i'd thought was happening but i wanted to check it wasn't just a case of needing to tick or untick a box somewhere in photoshop. I'll remember to shoot raw + jpeg in future.

As it happens as i said in my OP i was only really playing around so there's no great damage done, and i would think just desaturating any photos i want to keep will get them back to pretty much where they were anyway.
 
Paul

I didnt mean to shoot raw + jpeg all the time, its only really useful if you need to DL to show a client/immediate use, you can get the exact BW from your raw file at the click of a button in PS, dont forget shooting shoot raw + jpeg slows the frame rate/buffer down,

For me shoot Raw, do PP later to be honest :thumbs:
 
Any Canon picture style setting you set on your camera can ONLY be read by Canon DPP, all other software will just read the native raw data.
 
Easiest thing to do is to create a pre-set in ACR that matches the B&W sty;e that your camera produces. Then you can just batch process.....
 
Just Dave said:
Paul

I didnt mean to shoot raw + jpeg all the time, its only really useful if you need to DL to show a client/immediate use, you can get the exact BW from your raw file at the click of a button in PS, dont forget shooting shoot raw + jpeg slows the frame rate/buffer down,

For me shoot Raw, do PP later to be honest :thumbs:
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I knew what you meant Dave, it was probably my reply that should have been clearer. I meant that i'll remember to shoot raw + jpeg any time i'm playing around shooting B&W and can't be bothered with the PP work.

To my eyes the monochrome in-camera setting and using ACR to desaturate the raw file seem to give fairly similar results anyway.

And lets just say that having to show clients immediately isn't a current consideration, and probably never will be ;)
 
Barks said:
To my eyes the monochrome in-camera setting and using ACR to desaturate the raw file seem to give fairly similar results anyway.
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Most cameras just desaturate the colour to make the image B&W. Some cameras let you simulate the effect of coloured filters on B&W film. A red/orange filter made any blues in the image appear dark grey or black. You can simulate this on the RAW file in ACR too.

I think it is an advantage that the RAW file has the colours returned, as it allows you to convert the RAW to B&W yourself. If you want a basic subtraction of colour just move the Saturation slider. If you want to do that to a number of files at once, you can. :)

Plain desaturation always looks a bit dull and flat to me. :shrug: If you want more control you should have a play with the HSL/Greyscale tab in ACR. ;) I think the version of ACR you have has that option. I particularly like making the blue sky look dark grey or black against the fluffy clouds. :)
 
Just Dave said:
:thumbs:

I usually just use photoshop to do all my conversions
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I think i'll just stick to doing that too. Desaturating the raw files in batches takes such a small amount of time that it's almost not worth worrying about.
 
You might want to try using the B&W option in Photoshop, rather than desaturating. You get more control over the way it deals with individual colours, i.e the way greens are reproduced, darker or lighter, or how dark the sky is reproduced. There are also some presets to emulate filters such as Red , Blue and Yellow.
 
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