The best way to mono
Q I’ve always loved black-and-white images but am unsure of the right way to convert my pics to mono, as there seem to be lots of different ways of doing this. What’s the expert view on the best method?
James Robinson, Wivenhoe
A There are many ways of making a colour-to-mono conversion, and although there isn’t really a ‘right’ way, the method I prefer is to convert directly from a raw file in software, such as Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw. By doing it this way, you’ll have all the extra quality and data present in the raw file at your disposal.
To do it, with the file on screen in Adobe Camera Raw, open the Optics panel and tick the two boxes to reduce chromatic aberration and correct lens distortion. Now, at the top, select Adobe Monochrome in Profile. You’ll get an instant mono image, but to refine it, open the B&W Mixer panel, and adjust the eight colour sliders to make the colour data in each group brighter or darker. This will
