MONOCHROME PICTURE CONTROL

Don’t just convert to black and white – get different mono looks using colour filters and toning presets

Desaturate the photo

Set the adjustment palette’s pull-down menu to Latest Picture Control. Change the Standard Picture Control to Monochrome – this discards colour and creates a greyscale conversion. You can now adjust the contrast of various greyscale tones based on the original colours using filters.

Add a filter effect

If you set the Filter Effect drop-down menu to Red, this darkens the tones of the blue sky and lightens up the warm reds of the boat. This helps the boat’s lighter-looking shape stand out more, in contrast to the darker tones of the sky, giving the image more impact.

Apply some toning

To change the mood of your mono conversion you can add washes of colour, courtesy of the Toning pull-down menu. A Sepia setting, for example, helps give our photo a vintage feel. You can produce a more subtle sepia wash by dropping the Toning Saturation slider down to 2.