Frames · Manual5 · Develop

Chapter 05 · Develop

5.9

Monochrome

The Monochrome process in the sidebarMonochrome is selected. The Red filter raises warm-colour conversion bands and lowers blue bands. Toning controls appear below.COLOURMONOCHROMEMONOCHROMENONEYELORAREDGRNBLUROYGABPMTONINGSHADOWSHIGHLIGHTSBALANCE
Fig. 5.9Monochrome provides filter presets, eight conversion bands and a separate Toning group.

Choose Monochrome at the top of Develop’s sidebar to convert a photograph to black and white and adjust its colour-to-tone response.

The Colour / Monochrome toggle is one undoable edit. Monochrome replaces Colour and Colour mixer in the sidebar and adds Toning after Effects. Hidden colour settings are preserved. Switching back to Colour removes conversion and toning from the rendered result, including an applied look’s conversion. Returning to Monochrome restores the saved toning settings.

The change cross-fades unless Reduce Motion is enabled. Conversion follows white balance and precedes Tone, curves, Presence and Effects.

Filters and bands. Choose None, Yellow, Orange, Red, Green or Blue for preset conversion values. Eight sliders from red to magenta control how each original colour becomes grey. At ±100, a fully saturated colour can shift by up to 2.5 stops. Less saturated colours move less; neutral grey is unchanged. Adjusting a preset’s values clears its selection.

RESET returns the conversion bands to neutral without leaving Monochrome. Use the process toggle to leave Monochrome. Bypassing the Monochrome group displays the colour photograph. Conversion and Toning always affect the whole photograph and cannot be masked.

Toning. Choose Selenium, Sepia, Cyanotype, Cool or Warm, or set shadow hue and strength, highlight hue and strength, and balance. Pure black and paper white stay neutral. Toning follows every layer. With both strengths at zero, no tint is applied; hue settings remain ready for later use.

Histogram. Monochrome shows luminance alone. Clipping counts and highlight and shadow overlays remain available; channel selectors are hidden.

Looks. Seven monochrome looks are included. A monochrome look selects the process at any strength; Amount scales the bands, toning and other adjustments. A colour look leaves an existing Monochrome process active. Switching to Colour also disables conversion in the photograph’s copy of the applied look.

Browse’s Monochrome filter finds photographs whose selected treatment uses this process.

See Working in Browse.