Black and white photography is photography in shades of gray, from pure black to pure white, with no color: the picture records only how bright each part of the scene was. That strips an image down to its essential elements: light, shadow, shape, and texture. Without color, the viewer engages with the structure of the image itself. The best settings for it are simple: shoot RAW, set the camera’s picture style to monochrome so the screen shows a black and white view, use the lowest practical ISO, and expose to keep highlight detail. You then convert to black and white in editing, where you control how each color turns into a shade of gray.
This guide covers how to see in monochrome, when black and white is the right choice, the camera settings and light to look for, and the editing techniques that turn a flat conversion into a strong print.
Black and White Camera Settings at a Glance
- File format: What to use: RAW (or RAW plus JPEG). Why: Keeps all the color data, so you choose how each color becomes gray later.
- Picture style or profile: What to use: Monochrome. Why: Shows a black and white view on the screen and in an electronic viewfinder; RAW files still hold full color.
- ISO: What to use: As low as the light allows. Why: Noise shows clearly in smooth gray areas such as skies and walls.
- Mode: What to use: Aperture priority or manual. Why: Set the aperture for the depth of field you want.
- Exposure: What to use: As bright as possible without clipping important highlights. Why: Blown highlights show as flat white with no detail; shadows recover better from RAW.
- Metering aids: What to use: Histogram and highlight warning. Why: Judge the tonal range from data, not from the screen.
- White balance: What to use: Auto is fine for RAW. Why: It changes the color values the conversion works from, so you can use it as a tone control later.
Why Shoot in Black and White
Color is information, and sometimes that information distracts from the story you want to tell. A portrait with a cluttered, colorful background becomes a study in expression and character when converted to monochrome. A busy street scene that feels chaotic in color can become a graphic, structured image in black and white. Removing color simplifies the visual message and draws attention to the elements that matter most.
Black and white also carries emotional weight that color often does not. There is a reason fine art galleries, documentary projects, and editorial features still turn to monochrome. It creates a sense of timelessness, separating the image from the specifics of a particular moment and giving it a more universal, enduring quality. A color photograph says “this is what it looked like.” A black and white photograph says “this is what it felt like.”
A Short History: Why Old Photos Are Black and White
Photography began in black and white because the first light-sensitive materials recorded only how much light struck them, not its color. From the daguerreotype, announced in 1839, through the first decades of the twentieth century, nearly every photograph was monochrome, and photographers built a whole visual language of tone, contrast and luminosity within that limit.
Color photography started much earlier than most people expect. In 1861 James Clerk Maxwell showed a color image made from three exposures through red, green and blue filters, the principle most digital sensors still use. The first practical color process, the Autochrome plate, went on sale in 1907, and color slide film followed in the 1930s. For decades, though, color was slower, costlier and harder to print, so black and white stayed the everyday medium of news, family snapshots and art.
Color took over for snapshots and magazines in the 1960s and 1970s, as color film and printing became cheap. Black and white never ended: many fine art and documentary photographers kept to it, partly because it was the medium the great work had been made in, and black and white film is still manufactured. Today it is a choice rather than a limit, and the masters of photography show how much it can carry.
When to Use Black and White, and When to Keep Color
Black and white is a choice for each picture, not a rescue for a weak one. It tends to be the right call when:
- Color distracts from the subject. A bright sign, a clashing shirt or a busy background competes with the person or shape you photographed.
- The light is strong and directional. Hard side light, backlight and deep shadow give monochrome the contrast it needs.
- Texture, shape or pattern is the point. Weathered faces, architecture, sand, bark and repeating forms all gain from losing color.
- The color of the light is ugly or mixed. Scenes lit by several kinds of artificial light, with casts that cannot be balanced, often look clean in black and white.
- The mood is the subject. Fog, storms, solitude and grief often read more strongly without color.
- The file is noisy. High ISO noise looks more like film grain and less like a fault in monochrome.
Keep color when color is the subject (autumn leaves, a sunset, a market full of produce), when the subject separates from its background only by hue, or when the colors carry meaning the viewer needs. If you cannot say what the picture gains from black and white, it probably works better in color.
A quick test: describe why the picture works without naming a color. “Low light rakes across the old wall and every crack casts a shadow” needs no color, so it will likely hold up in black and white. “The red door glows against the blue wall” depends on color, and converting it would remove the reason for the picture.
Learning to See in Monochrome
The biggest challenge in black and white photography is not technical. It is learning to previsualize how a color scene will translate into tones of gray. Two objects that look completely different in color might appear nearly identical in black and white if they share a similar luminance value. A red flower against green leaves is striking in color but may become a flat, muddy gray in monochrome because both colors convert to similar tones. Elements that rely on color for separation can merge into one mass; what separates them in black and white is a difference in brightness.
Train your eye by looking for tonal contrast rather than color contrast. Ask yourself: where are the lightest and darkest areas in this scene? Is there strong separation between the subject and the background in terms of brightness, not just hue? Scenes with a wide range of tones, from deep blacks through rich mid-tones to bright whites, tend to produce the most compelling black and white images. Squinting at a scene helps, because it blurs detail and leaves the large areas of light and dark.
Many cameras offer a monochrome preview mode that shows the scene in black and white on the rear screen or through the electronic viewfinder. This black and white view is an excellent training tool. When shooting in RAW format, the camera still records the full color data, so you lose nothing by using the monochrome preview. Shoot with it on for several sessions and previsualizing in gray becomes much easier.
Camera Settings for Black and White
Always shoot in RAW. This is important for all photography, but it is especially critical for black and white. A RAW file gives you complete control over how colors are converted to tones during editing. A JPEG captured in the camera’s monochrome mode throws away the color data permanently, leaving you with no ability to adjust the tonal conversion after the fact.
Set your camera’s picture style or film simulation to monochrome for the screen preview, but make sure you are recording RAW files underneath. This gives you the best of both worlds: a black and white preview in the field and full color data on your memory card. If you want a black and white JPEG straight from the camera as well, record RAW plus JPEG.
Use the lowest ISO the light allows. Noise is more visible in the smooth tonal gradations of black and white images, particularly in areas of even tone like skies and walls. Deliberately added grain in editing is a different thing, and a popular creative choice.
For most subjects, aperture priority works well. Set the aperture for the depth of field you need, let the camera set the shutter speed, and use exposure compensation to protect highlights.
Exposure: Protect the Highlights
In black and white, the relationship between highlights and shadows is everything. Use your histogram to make sure you capture the full tonal range without clipping important highlights. Blown highlights are more obvious in monochrome than in color, because there is no color to hint at what was there; they read as a flat white void. Shadows recover better from a RAW file than highlights do, so when a scene has more range than the sensor can hold, keep the highlights and lift the shadows later.
Within that limit, exposing as bright as you can without clipping (often called exposing to the right) gives the cleanest files and the most tonal information for the conversion. A high-key look (bright, airy, few shadows) or a low-key look (dark, moody, dramatic) is best set in editing from that clean file, not by deliberately misexposing in the camera.
Do You Need Color Filters?
Film photographers used colored filters over the lens to control how colors rendered in gray. On a digital camera, the color sliders in editing do the same job after the fact from a RAW file, so colored filters are rarely needed. They still matter if you shoot monochrome JPEGs, and many cameras’ monochrome picture styles include digital filter effects that copy them. A polarizing filter remains useful, since it darkens blue sky and cuts reflections in a way editing cannot fully copy. The classic filter effects are:
| Filter or slider effect | Lightens | Darkens | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yellow | Yellows, slightly lightens skin | Blue sky, slightly | A natural-looking sky with some cloud separation |
| Orange | Oranges, skin | Blue sky, more strongly | Stronger skies, smoother skin, texture in stone and brick |
| Red | Reds, skin | Blue sky (very dark), greens | Dramatic skies with bright white clouds |
| Green | Foliage | Reds, including lips and skin blemishes | Landscapes with lots of vegetation |
| Blue | Blue sky, haze | Reds and skin | Adding atmosphere and haze; rarely used for portraits |
Light for Black and White
The direction and quality of light matter even more in black and white than in color, because light and shadow are the only tools you have for creating depth and form. Front lighting flattens the scene. Side lighting defines form through shadow. Backlighting creates silhouettes and rim light. Overhead light produces hard shadows with a strong graphic quality.
Many black and white photographers like the hour after sunrise and before sunset, not for the warm color, which is irrelevant in monochrome, but for the low light that creates long shadows and emphasizes texture. Midday light, often avoided for color work, can suit black and white, because the hard overhead sun creates stark shadows and strong contrast. Soft, overcast light works too, for subjects that need a gentle, full range of grays rather than drama.
Composition for Black and White
Without color to create visual interest, your composition must be stronger. Black and white photography rewards deliberate, structured compositions built on these elements.
Contrast
The interplay between light and dark is the foundation of every black and white image. Look for scenes where light falls dramatically, creating strong highlights against deep shadows, or where a dark subject stands against a light background, or the reverse. Side lighting and back lighting often produce the most striking contrast.
Texture
Without color, texture becomes much more prominent. Rough stone walls, weathered wood, cracked earth, sand ripples, bark, fabric folds, and skin detail all become powerful visual elements in monochrome. Low-angle side light brings texture out, because it casts tiny shadows across every surface irregularity.
Shape, Form, Pattern and Lines
- Shape and form. Clean geometric shapes, silhouettes, and three-dimensional form revealed by directional light are amplified when color is removed. The gradual change from light to shadow across a curved surface is what makes an object feel solid.
- Pattern and repetition. Repeating elements create rhythm that can carry an image on structure alone. Rows of columns, fence posts, windows, or waves become graphic in monochrome, and any break in the pattern stands out immediately.
- Leading lines. Lines that guide the viewer through the frame become more prominent in black and white because there is no color to compete for attention. Roads, shadows, architectural edges, and natural lines all gain emphasis.
Tonal Range
Tonal range is the spread of grays between pure black and pure white. A wide range, with a true black, a true white and many steps in between, gives a rich, detailed print. A narrow range can look soft and quiet if it is deliberate, or flat and muddy if it is not. Decide which you want before you edit. Imagining the finished tones before you press the shutter is what Ansel Adams called visualization (often called previsualization), and his Zone System is a method for placing each part of a scene on a chosen gray.
High Contrast, Low Contrast, High Key and Low Key
- High contrast black and white has deep blacks, bright whites and few mid-tones. It is bold and graphic, and suits street photography, silhouettes, hard light and dramatic portraits. Push it too far and shadow and highlight detail disappear.
- Low contrast black and white keeps most tones in soft, close grays. It is gentle and atmospheric, and suits fog, mist, snow, quiet portraits and nostalgic moods. It works when it is clearly deliberate; a low contrast picture that was meant to be punchy just looks flat.
- High key uses mostly bright tones with few dark areas, for a light, airy feeling.
- Low key is mostly dark, with a few bright accents, for a moody, dramatic picture.
All four are deliberate departures from a full tonal range. Choose one because it matches the subject and the mood, then set it in editing from a well exposed file.
Subjects That Work Well in Black and White
Portraits. Portrait photography in black and white focuses attention on the subject’s expression, eyes, and character. It removes the distraction of clothing colors and background elements, making the connection more direct. Dramatic lighting, such as window light from one side, produces classic monochrome portraits, and weathered faces with deep lines gain great power in monochrome.
Architecture. Buildings, bridges, and interior spaces are defined by geometry, light, and shadow. Black and white emphasizes structural lines and spatial relationships rather than material finishes.
Street photography. Street photography has a deep tradition in black and white. The monochrome treatment unifies busy urban scenes and gives them a cohesive visual language, and it connects the pictures to a documentary tradition that runs from Henri Cartier-Bresson to Vivian Maier.
Landscape. While landscape photography is often associated with vivid color, many of the most famous landscape images ever made are black and white. Dramatic skies, fog, snow, and stark desert landscapes all translate well to monochrome, especially when the scene has a strong tonal range and interesting textures. Long exposure black and white landscapes, with smooth water and streaked clouds, have a calm, abstract quality.
Long Exposure in Black and White
Water smoothed into mist, clouds streaked across the sky and people blurred into faint traces can look like an obvious effect in color. In black and white the same blur reads more like a quiet interpretation of the scene, because there are no realistic colors to anchor it. In daylight you need a dark neutral density filter, often 6 or 10 stops, to stretch the shutter speed to seconds or minutes, and a tripod to hold the camera still. Look for scenes with something solid and sharp, such as rocks, a pier or a building, so the smooth areas have something to contrast with.
Minimalist subjects. Simple compositions with clean lines and negative space are naturally suited to black and white. The absence of color reinforces the simplicity and lets the viewer focus entirely on form and space.
Converting Color to Black and White in Post-Processing
Simply desaturating a color image produces flat, lifeless results, because every color is turned to gray by brightness alone. Proper black and white conversion gives you control over how each color in the original image maps to a specific gray tone. This is where the real creative power lies.
Channel Mixing and Color Filter Effects
In Lightroom, Photoshop, and most editing applications, the black and white conversion tool includes sliders for individual colors. Lightroom Classic’s B&W panel has eight: red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple, and magenta. Photoshop’s Black & White adjustment layer has six. Each slider controls how bright or dark that color appears in the final monochrome image. Dragging the blue slider to the left darkens the sky, making clouds stand out dramatically. Pulling the red and orange sliders to the right brightens skin tones for a more flattering portrait. This is the digital version of the lens filters in the table above.
An older method, the channel mixer, sets how much of the red, green and blue channels goes into the gray image. More red gives the effect of a red filter: lighter skin and a darker blue sky. More blue lightens skies and darkens skin, which is rarely flattering in a portrait.
Experiment with these sliders on every conversion. The default automatic conversion is a starting point, not a destination. Small adjustments to the color channels can transform a dull conversion into a striking one by creating the tonal separation that makes a black and white image work. Push them gently, though: extreme slider moves can create banding, noise or halos along edges between colors. Changing the white balance of a RAW file before or after conversion shifts the colors the sliders work on, which gives you one more way to move tones.
Contrast and Tone
Contrast is the most important adjustment in black and white editing, and the tone curve is the main tool. An S-curve that darkens the shadows and brightens the highlights gives a punchy, dramatic look. A gentler curve keeps a softer image with a wider range of grays.
Global contrast affects the whole image. Local contrast, set with the Clarity and Texture sliders or similar tools, brings out fine detail. Boost it for textured subjects like landscapes, architecture and character portraits, and reduce it for smooth subjects like beauty portraits and high-key scenes.
Decide on your black and white points. Should the darkest areas be pure black, or keep some detail? Should the brightest areas be pure white, or slightly off-white? Images with a true black and a true white have the most punch. Images whose tones sit in the middle feel softer and quieter.
Dodging and Burning
Dodging and burning (selectively lightening and darkening) is a technique borrowed directly from the darkroom, and it is even more important in black and white than in color. Because monochrome images depend entirely on the relationship between light and dark tones, guiding the viewer’s eye through selective brightness is essential.
Use adjustment brushes, linear gradients or radial filters to brighten the areas you want to draw attention to and darken the areas that should recede. In a portrait, you might brighten the face and darken the shoulders and edges of the frame. In a landscape, you might burn the corners and dodge the main subject. These adjustments should be subtle and built up in small steps. The viewer should feel guided through the image without noticing the editing.
Grain and Toning
Digital black and white files can look too clean. A small amount of added grain adds texture to smooth areas, breaks up banding in gradients, and gives a feel many viewers associate with film. In Lightroom, the Effects panel has Amount, Size and Roughness sliders. Add grain until it is just visible at your final print or screen size, and match it to the mood: fine grain suits a classic look or a gentle portrait, coarse grain a gritty street or documentary one. On a noisy high ISO file, apply noise reduction first and then add grain, so you control its character.
Toning adds a slight color to a monochrome image: a warm sepia, a cool blue, or split toning, with one hue in the highlights and another in the shadows. In Lightroom, use the Color Grading panel’s Shadows and Highlights wheels at low saturation. Subtle toning can make a print feel warmer or colder without reading as a color photograph.
Printing Black and White Images
Black and white photographs come alive in print. A well-printed monochrome image on good paper has a depth and richness that is difficult to appreciate on a screen, so printing deserves a place in your workflow.
Paper changes the look. Glossy papers give the deepest blacks and the widest tonal range but can introduce distracting reflections; matte and semi-matte fine art papers have slightly lighter blacks and a softer, quieter feel. Baryta papers, which mimic the surface of traditional darkroom fiber prints, are a popular choice for exhibition-quality black and white work. Make sure your monitor is calibrated and you use the right paper profile, and soft-proof your images before printing to anticipate how the tones will translate from screen to paper.
Common Mistakes
- Converting weak pictures to rescue them. Black and white does not fix a poor composition or flat light; it usually makes them more obvious.
- Desaturating instead of converting. It turns colors to gray by brightness alone, so reds and greens of similar brightness merge.
- Shooting monochrome JPEG only. You lose the color data and with it all control over the conversion.
- Muddy mid-tones. A conversion with no true black or white often looks gray and lifeless. Check the histogram and set your end points on purpose.
- Overcooked contrast and clarity. Halos around edges, crunchy skin and blocked shadows read as heavy editing, not drama.
- Blown skies. A clipped white sky has no detail to darken later. Protect it when you shoot.
Building Your Black and White Vision
Black and white photography is a skill that develops over time. Commit to shooting only in black and white for a defined period, a week, a month or a whole project, with the monochrome preview on. Without the option of relying on color, you will grow much more aware of tone, contrast, texture, shape and light.
Study the work of photographers known for their monochrome images: Ansel Adams for landscape, Richard Avedon for portraiture, Henri Cartier-Bresson for street photography, Edward Weston for still life and form, and Dorothea Lange for documentary work. For black and white landscape outside the American West, look at Fay Godwin’s Land (1985) and Remains of Elmet (1979), her pictures of the West Yorkshire hills paired with Ted Hughes’s poems. Pay attention to how they use light, shadow, and composition, and how they place the lightest and darkest tones in the frame. Upload your work to tools like PhotoScanr to review your exposure data and track how your settings translate to final tonal quality. The more you practice seeing in tones rather than colors, the more natural it becomes, and the stronger your overall photographic eye will grow as a result.
Questions About Black and White Photography
What are the best camera settings for black and white photography?
Shoot RAW with the picture style set to monochrome for preview, use the lowest practical ISO, and choose aperture priority or manual. Expose as bright as you can without clipping important highlights, and convert in editing.
Are there rules for black and white photography?
No fixed rules, but a few guidelines hold up: look for tonal contrast rather than color contrast, use directional light, aim for a full range from black to white unless you want a soft look, and make texture, shape or emotion the subject. Converting a picture just because it looks dull in color rarely works.
How do I get a black and white view on my camera?
Set the picture style, picture control or film simulation to monochrome. With RAW recording on, the screen and electronic viewfinder show black and white while the RAW file keeps full color.
How do I add contrast to a black and white photo?
Set the black and white points with the Blacks and Whites sliders, add an S-curve in the tone curve, and use the color sliders to separate tones that converted too similar. Add local contrast with Clarity or Texture, and use dodging and burning for control area by area.
When did color photography start?
The first color photograph was shown in 1861, made from three exposures through red, green and blue filters. Practical color plates arrived in 1907 and color film in the 1930s, but black and white stayed the everyday medium until color became cheap in the 1960s and 1970s.
Why are old photos black and white?
Early photographic materials recorded only how much light reached them, not its color. Color processes existed from the early twentieth century but were slow, expensive and hard to print, so most photographs stayed black and white for decades.
What is the difference between high contrast and low contrast black and white?
High contrast pictures have deep blacks, bright whites and few mid-tones, which gives a bold, graphic look. Low contrast pictures keep most tones in soft, close grays, which suits fog, quiet portraits and calm moods.
Is it better to shoot in black and white or convert later?
Convert later, but preview in black and white while shooting. A RAW file with a monochrome preview gives you the black and white view in the field and full control over the conversion afterward.