The Monochrome Special

"In essence it is about simplification of an image…"

Welcome to our monochrome special – it is just three years since we introduced one for Professional Imagemaker and therefore timely that we revisit the topic. Although technology has moved on in the digital scene, the underlying strengths of the mono image are timeless. In essence it is about simplification of an image,the reduction to just tonal values of a single hue, without any distracting colours to disturb the gaze. Although this is a simple ideal, the practice is somewhat more difficult to achieve. The eye is very much more sensitive to colour differences in neutral or near-neutral tones and any unwanted bias will be readily detected. Generally a bias towards green is the most unwelcome outcome, a preference that extends back all the way to Ansel Adams. In his book, The Print, Adams talks about toning a monochrome silver print to ensure that no residual olive tones remain:

'In my opinion the olive-greenish values of many papers detract from the image, but they can be neutralised by selenium toning.'

Some things never change. In the same book, Adams says, 'The subtle colour changes of toning are more apparent under tungsten lighting than in daylight'. Adams died in 1984, well before inkjet printing really took off and metamerism was already rearing its head!

So what else can monochrome bring to the digital table? Well, for starters you can mix mono and colour on the same page of an album spread (or poster or advert or design layout). This opens the possibility of allowing colour images space in which to speak out from or conversely colour can be used as a muted background to allow monochrome to excel in its difference.

As a means of artistic expression mono has always been highly valued. If you base any analysis on the most recent photography sales at Christies, the statistics are quite definitive. At the November 2008 auction a total of 127 lots were offered and 119 of these were sold for a total of almost £350,000. The highest price paid was for five, 1930s still lives by Willy Zilke at £16,250. Within the lots offered, 147 were monochrome (silver halide), 19 were described as chromogenic and two were Polaroids. About 18 lots were images of naked or nearnaked females, seven were of naked or near-naked males (and male couples), 28 were of people recognisable by their name (eg, Kate Moss, Marilyn Munroe, Bob Dylan). At a later auction in New York a total of $1.3 million was realised in the Christie Icons of Glamour and Style auction. Top slot went to Helmut Newton at $242,500 for a large-scale monochrome diptych. Of 104 lots sold, 17 were in colour, again therefore the predominant medium was silver halide mono. From both these auctions only a handful (probably fewer than five) were inkjet.

We discuss fine art monochrome and collecting pictures with Eric Howard later in this issue, but for the moment we move on to the mechanics of digital monochrome.

Conversion to Monochrome

This is the key issue and we have modified the chat we made three years ago to bring it up to date. No apologies are made for the complexity of the chart; it shows it the way it is! It reveals just how many and varied are the options for making a monochrome from our coloured world and the problem for many is in making a choice. Everybody has their own pet way of making monochrome and usually defends their choice vigorously. The breadth of this experience points to the fact that there are many successful ways of converting and that every image is likely to benefit from individual tweaks. Two general rules of photography remain if force though – fancy conversion techniques are unlikely to rescue a fundamentally flawed image and a busy professional needs a method that works quickly and reliably for most (if not all) of their images.

Today (and assuming you have access to either CS3 or CS4) Photoshop will do a great conversion directly from the RAW file. You have three options: to desaturate the image directly, a sophisticated HSL/Grayscale dialogue box or finally a Split Toning dialogue box. Desaturation is self-evident, you simply remove the colour. The other two we will describe. You should note that similar controls are available from the Adjustment Layer menu with the additional sophistication that you can control the places where the changes take place with a layer mask. There is also the thorny issue of whether to work in 8-bit or 16-bit – more on that later.

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