Opening B & W RAW images in CS5

Ok, I don't have a clue what I'm doing wrong here.

I've just started using RAW with my Canon 5d Mkii and any RAW images I take in black and white don't open as black and white in CS5. Instead they open as a regular colour image. What am I missing here? They are fine when I view them in Bridge, but as soon as I open them in CS5 they are colour. The only way I can get them back to B & W is to add a layer mask to the image. This makes it kind of pointless shooting in B & W in the first place doesn't it?

I'd just like to know why the images don't open in CS5 as they were shot. I'm sure there is a very simple explanation for this. It cannot be this complicated.

You are using a Canon 'Picture Style' to do this in-camera and CS5 won't recognise this. The only program to recognise these picture styles is Canon's own DPP software.

If you really need B&W images straight out of the camera just shoot jpeg's.(or a combination of raw + jpg)

Well that's just stupid then!! I have a whole bunch of shots using different filter effects as well. Are you telling me I'm going to have to save all of these as jpegs before I can use them in CS5? What the point of shooting in RAW at all then?

namrog5dmkii wrote in post #12498387
Well that's just stupid then!! I have a whole bunch of shots using different filter effects as well. Are you telling me I'm going to have to save all of these as jpegs before I can use them in CS5? What the point of shooting in RAW at all then?

If you are going to use a picture style to convert to B&W 'in-camera' and use the various filters as well, then none whatsoever - Just shoot jpeg

The point of raw is to have total control over your images and not let the camera (or picture style) dictate how an image will look.

Thanks for the tips. Now I can sleep easier without thinking I'm missing something!!

Use DPP. It will use all camera parameters as a starting point..

namrog5dmkii wrote in post #12498387
Well that's just stupid then!! I have a whole bunch of shots using different filter effects as well. Are you telling me I'm going to have to save all of these as jpegs before I can use them in CS5? What the point of shooting in RAW at all then?

Shoot everything in RAW and apply the filter effects in Photoshop/other. You can get a color photo converted to B&W with one click. This way you can not only apply many filters to the same image, but cancel those you don't like and have the chance to experiment.

Using the in-camera filters - the camera will do just what Photoshop would, i.e. apply a software filter to the RAW image. But unlike the camera, you can get gazillion filter plug-ins for Photoshop.

P.S. if you really, really want to use the camera filters, you can shoot in RAW+Jpeg mode. This way you will have your "filtered jpeg" image, already converted, and the RAW file, so you can correct if you don't like the filter, but love the shot. I.e. if you shot the B&W image using RAW+Jpeg, you will have a jpeg image that's balck and white and one that's the color RAW shot.

You can do a much better conversion to B/W in ACR/LR or by converting a 16 bit color (RGB) tif in PSCS5 itself with much finer control than the camera's few "filter" presets and almost infinite possibilities using the the channel mixer. The power of RAW will definitely produce a better B/W than the camera can for exactly the same reasons that it produces a better color image.

It should be noted, however, that many B/W shooters set the camera to produce a B/W review even though they shoot RAW and know that they will make their own B/W later, because the review helps them visualize the scene in B/W.

René Damkot wrote in post #12498803
Use DPP. It will use all camera parameters as a starting point..

I'll second this -- if you want to do a lot of in-camera settings then the Canon Raw processing software that came with your camera, Digital Photo Professional (DPP) is what you really want to work with. It will use all those settings to give you a "starting point", whereas Adobe Camera Raw will not. The reason Bridge shows this is because it is showing you the thumbnail ebedded in the Raw file, but the actual Raw data does not have camera Picture Styles and other settings applied to it. This is the nature of Raw!

The alternatives, as has been mentioned, are to either shoot jpeg (or Raw+jpeg) so that those settings will be permanently applied, or to do the conversion in either Camera Raw or Photoshop. That gives you the most control, but you need to do the processing, although both Camera Raw and the Photoshop editor have plenty of tools for B&W/monochrome conversions.

When you shoot in B&W in camera, it doesn't change the raw file. The raw data from the sensor is the same irrespective of what picture styles or filters you choose to use in camera. What those options do affect is the in camera conversion of the raw data to jpg. What you are actually seeing after each shot is the preview jpg that has had the effects applied, not the raw data.

As others have said, if you want to shoot in raw and have the picture styles/filters used as a starting point in your workflow, you should use Canon's DPP program which recognises those effects, something which Adobe's raw convertor doesn't, and why your raw files appear in colour when opening them in Photoshop.