Convert to black and white

Monochrome is a switch in the Profile section. It turns the whole photo gray after your other edits, and your colors are kept underneath, so you can switch it off again.

Convert a photo

1. Open Profile in the left column.
2. Turn on Monochrome.

Monochrome is global. It applies to the whole photo, not to a single layer.

Shape the tones by color

A plain conversion gives every color its natural brightness. To make a blue sky darker or green foliage lighter, use the Color Adjust section:

1. With Monochrome on, the section is titled Color Adjust · Luminosity and shows only Luma Shift. Hue and saturation can’t show in a gray image.
2. Click the color picker, then click a color in the photo, or drag across an area, to add an edit that selects it.
3. Drag Luma Shift to darken (negative) or lighten (positive) everything that color selects.

The brightness change happens before the gray conversion, so it carries through. Color Adjust belongs to a layer, so a layer with a mask can darken just the sky.

Tip

Choose a Toning look after Monochrome to tint the gray. See Looks.

Technical details: how the conversion works

The conversion keeps each pixel’s perceptual lightness (Oklab L) and drops its color. The result is a true neutral gray in linear light, with no per-color mix of its own: the mix is what Luma Shift does, earlier in the chain. Monochrome runs after the layers and before the crop, the vignette and the look, so a vignette darkens the gray image and a look tints it.