When I started using Aperture, I struggled to find a good greyscale or monochrome mix for my images. While there are tons of Photoshop approaches to black-and-white (greyscale) conversion, I rather use Aperture to make the conversion.
Ways to Mix
For those of who don’t know, there are few quick ways to create a monochrome conversion in Aperture. After doing initial exposure adjustments and enhancements, here’s three ways to do monochrome conversions in Aperture.
1. Desaturate: If you want to quickly see how an image will look in black-and-white, simple desaturate it, i.e. de-colorize it.
2. Monochrome Mixer with Custom Filters: Select the Monochrome Mix with Custom Filter in the Adjustments Inspector. Click the Add Adjustment button at the top of the Adjustment Inspector, and select Monochrome Mixer with Custom Filters. Or better yet, use Control + M. This mixer essentially desaturates the image. For me, the mix is rather cold and bland. But it does give you an idea where to begin. The mixer comes with additional presets that you can experiment with.
3. Monochrome Color: The monochrome color tool, accessed also from the Add Adjustment pop-up menu, is more interesting. It converts of course the photo to single mono color. You can certainly use monochrome color for special type of photo effects, and you can also experiement with the intensity of monochrome color conversion, creating a sort of split color or duotone effect.
4. Custom Mix: The best conversion is the one you customize yourself. The mix I finally came up with involves using both the Monochrome Mixer and the Sepia Tone.
For the Monochrome with Custom Filter, I moved the red, green, and blue channel sliders to these percentages:
Red: 24%
Green: 59%
Blue: 11%
For the Sepia Tone
I change the intensity to: 0.2
I’m pleased with the results. Mixing in a touch of sepia provides warmer tone to my images. I saved both adjustments presets so that I can use them again.
For you Mac Lightroom Users, check out Christina N. Dickson’s, “Black and White Conversion – 3 Option in Adobe Lightroom” posted on Digital Photography School.
