How to Create Black & White Images in Adobe Camera RAW

Good Black and White Images Come From the Colours You Started With

Camera Raw gives you a better black and white conversion than desaturating ever will. Desaturating a photograph turns it grey. That’s the whole problem with the obvious approach: two colours that were vividly different — a red jumper against green foliage — can convert to almost identical shades of grey, and the picture goes flat exactly where it used to have separation.

The Black & White Mixer in Adobe Camera Raw exists to fix that. Camera Raw lets you decide how bright each original colour becomes in the conversion, so you can darken a sky by pulling on the blues, or lift skin by lifting the oranges, long after the colour has visibly gone. Once you understand that, monochrome stops being a filter and becomes a set of decisions.

Why the Mixer Is the Whole Thing

Contrast Comes From Colour Separation

Two tones that look different in colour can convert to the same grey. The mixer is how you pull them apart again.

Nothing Is Actually Discarded

The colour information stays in the file while the mixer works from it. That’s why you can keep adjusting the conversion indefinitely rather than committing at the moment you desaturate.

You Can Drag on the Photograph Itself

The targeted adjustment tool means you never have to work out which slider corresponds to which part of the image. Click the thing you want darker and pull down.

Set Up Before You Convert

1. Open the Image and Go to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters

   Black and white is a treatment you will revise more than most — possibly back to colour entirely. A Smart Object keeps that door open.

2. Open Filter > Camera Raw Filter

   Works on JPEGs and any other format, not just raw files.

Convert, Then Mix

3. Click the Black & White Tab

   Top of the right-hand panel. The image converts instantly — and this default conversion is a starting point, not a result.

4. Open the Black & White Mixer

   Eight sliders, one per colour range from the original photograph.

5. Grab the Targeted Adjustment Tool

   The small circular icon. This is the part worth learning — it turns an abstract panel into direct manipulation of the picture in front of you.

6. Click and Drag Directly on the Image

   Drag up on an area to brighten whatever colours were there, down to darken them. Pull down on a sky and it deepens because the blues drop; pull up on a face and the oranges lift. You’re working by eye on the actual subject rather than guessing at slider names.

7. Try Auto as a Reference Point

   Worth clicking once to see where Photoshop would put things, then adjusting from there or starting again.

Add a Tone If It Wants One

8. Close the Mixer and Open Color Grading

   Get the greys right first. Toning a conversion you haven’t finished means judging two things at once.

9. Use the Main Colour Wheel for a Uniform Tint

   This is where a sepia or a cool blue-grey comes from — a single hue laid across the whole image.

10. Or Use the Three-Way Wheels for Split Toning

    Separate hues into shadows, midtones and highlights. Warm highlights against cool shadows is the classic film look, and it’s more interesting than a flat sepia.

11. Alt/Option-Click Reset Color Grading to Go Back to Neutral

    Instantly returns to pure black and white without undoing your mixer work.

Keep It Editable

12. Click OK to Apply as a Smart Filter

    It appears beneath the layer in the Layers panel.

13. Toggle the Eye Icon to Compare Against the Colour Version

    The fastest before-and-after you’ll get, and worth doing repeatedly — some photographs are simply better in colour and it’s useful to find that out.

14. Double-Click Camera Raw Filter to Return

    Every mixer position and every toning wheel exactly as you left them.

Common Mistakes

Just Desaturating

It throws away every decision the mixer would have let you make. There’s no reason to do it.

Accepting the Default Conversion

Clicking the Black & White tab is step one of about six, not the finished job.

Toning Before the Greys Are Right

A tint over a muddy conversion is still muddy. Fix the mix first.

Pushing the Mixer Sliders Too Far

Extreme values produce banding and blotchy skin. Large moves in the mixer show up faster than they do in colour.

Converting Everything

Black and white suits photographs with strong form, texture or light. On an image whose whole point was the colour, it removes the subject.

You Have to Keep Thinking in Colour

The counter-intuitive part of monochrome work is that you never stop dealing with colour. Every grey in the finished picture came from a hue, and the mixer is simply the place where you decide the exchange rate between them.

Which is why it’s worth learning to look at a colour scene and ask which parts would collapse into the same tone. Red and green at similar brightness are the classic trap. Once you can spot that before you convert, you’ll know both which photographs will work in black and white and, when one doesn’t, exactly which slider to reach for.

Convert One Photograph Properly Today

Convert to a Smart Object, open the Camera Raw Filter, click the Black & White tab, and then — instead of touching the sliders — grab the targeted adjustment tool and drag directly on the sky and on your subject. Download the free sample image and PSD and take it all the way: get the greys separated first, then add a tone in Color Grading, and toggle the Smart Filter’s eye icon to compare against the colour original. For Photoshop taught in order rather than feature by feature, our PRO Photoshop Learning Path is where to go next.

Quick Reference: Keys, Menus and Settings

• Keep it editableFilter > Convert for Smart Filters, then Filter > Camera Raw Filter
• ConvertClick B&W at the top of the Edit panel
• Starting pointB&W Mixer > Auto
• Mix on the photoClick the targeted adjustment icon in the Mixer, then drag up on the image to brighten that color, down to darken it
• CompareThe before/after icon at the bottom shows both side by side
• Sepia or a tintColor Grading > the global icon: set Hue and Saturation; the three-way view tints shadows, midtones and highlights separately
• Back to pure black and whiteAlt/Option-click Reset Color Grading
• Change it laterDouble-click Camera Raw Filter under Smart Filters

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