Why do RAW photos shot in monochrome appear in color on my computer?

Asked 4/19/2015

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I shot RAW images on a Nikon D3200 with the camera's monochrome picture mode enabled. On the camera, the images preview as black and white, but after transferring them to my computer they appear in color. Why does this happen, and how can I view or process them in monochrome?

nikon black-and-white post-processing monochrome raw

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

11y ago

2 Answers

When you shoot monochrome as RAW files, the monochrome setting is just meta-data in the RAW file. The raw data from the sensor is still the same.

You will only see the monochrome effect when you view the file in a program that supports the monochrome flag. Obviously what you are using to preview the images doesn't support it. The program from Nikon for converting RAW files would support it for example.

Originally by user149. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user149

11y ago

AI Answer

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This is normal for RAW capture. The camera’s monochrome mode usually does not change the underlying RAW sensor data; it mainly affects the camera preview/JPEG and may be stored only as metadata or a processing hint.

So if your computer software ignores that metadata, the RAW file will open in color. To see the black-and-white version, you have two options:

Open the RAW files in software that understands and applies the camera’s monochrome setting, such as the camera maker’s RAW software.
Convert the RAW files to black and white manually in your RAW editor.

In general, most in-camera image style settings are not baked into RAW files. RAW is meant to preserve the full color data so you can choose the final look later during processing.

Why do RAW photos shot in monochrome appear in color on my computer?

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