Black and White (Monotone) on digital camera recorded in raw is color in image manipulation software! Why?

Question

I've change my camera to Monotone mode to record a picture. However, once I've done that the shot on camera display is Monotone (Black and White). The image is recorded in raw format and when I transfer it to computer and opening in the image manipulation software it still shows as color image. Is that intentional? Was the image just recorded with specific information and needs to be converted to grayscale after? Thank you

Answer 1

When you shoot in RAW you get whet the sensor sees. Gimmicky adjustments such as the black & white filter (and the ever popular sepia filter), and even a few serious adjustments such as the custom white balance are only saved to jpg files.

You could consider this a weaknes of the camera, but keep in mind that any in-camera conversion to black and white pales in comparison to what you can achieve in PhotoShop - much faster processing, vastly more refined software. If you are serious enough to be working with RAW files in the first place, look up some black and white work flows for the image editor of your choice.

As an example of what you can achieve when you have a color file to begin with - you can tweak the rgb levels before converting to b&w for beter contrast. You can make your b&w pictures look a million diferent ways... the plug-in that I use with PhotoShop even offers a dozen automated b&w styles. With the b&w setting on your camera, you get just one way.

Answer 2

Yes that is intentional. The whole point of RAW image capture is to retain all of the original image data at time of capture. If you want to shoot in black and white but don't want to convert it yourself then shoot in JPEG or RAW+JPEG. The JPEG will be black and white like you want. Again, RAW will retain all of the original color data.

Answer 3

Hmm. It shouldn't act anything like that. Probably your software didn't read the RAW files correctly. But it is better to shoot in color and then convert the picture to B&W in your PC anyway.