CS2 and B&W

[dmm96452]

I went out to shoot some shots of the winter storm today and decided to change the settings in my camera (20D) to black and white. I shot all of the shots in RAW only. When I open them in CS2 the RAW preview window opens them as color shots. When I look at them in the RAW viewer they are b&w but CS2 seems to want to convert them to color. On one of the shots I even used the camera's sepia filter and that gets stripped.

I know that when the shot is taken the color info is recorded by the sensor regardless of settings but does anyone know why CS2 is doing this or how to set it up so it doesn't?

[Asylum Steve]

I don't have a 20D, but it sounds to me like your camera is configuring your RAW files in a way that CS2 can't read.

Just to clarify the problem, when you say "open them in CS2", do you mean Photoshop itself, or Adobe Bridge? And when you say "RAW viewer", do you mean the Canon software, or CS2's RAW viewer?

I guess what I'm wondering the most is why you'd even want to shoot in camera in a BW mode. There are many ways to convert a RAW color image to BW in CS2, and they all offer way more control of the image.

[dmm96452]

RAW viewer = Microsoft RAW image viewer.
Open in CS2 = Photoshop.

I shot in b&w simply because I had never done it before. Getting to know the camera.

What is the best way to convert to b&w in Photoshop?

[Asylum Steve]

What is the best way to convert to b&w in Photoshop?

Well, can't say it's the best, but an easy way with a lot of user control is to open your color image in PS, copy the main layer, make the copy layer active, then go to Image>Adjustments>Channel Mixer.

Check the Monochrome box (this will de-saturate your pic), and play with the various sliders to get different bw results.

[dmm96452]

Thanks, Steve. I'll try that out.