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carynorton
Inspiring
February 5, 2021
Question

Bridge converting images to Grayscale when image fully desaturated

  • February 5, 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 2417 views

In short, if I open a file in ACR and drop the saturation to 0%, when I Open that image Bridge / Photoshop Opens it as Grayscale instead of RGB. This is without hitting the "BW" button. 

 

If I Save instead of Open, it saves as RGB (my expected outcome). It's only when I Open that it randomly decided to open as Grayscale. I haven't found a way to adjust this behavior. 

 

Anybody have a suggestion? 

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

carynorton
Inspiring
January 12, 2024

So this is still happening 3 years later so I'm assuming it's a feature not a bug. It sure would be nice to be able to force PS to open the file as a "Color" image, ie RGB, if it's set to Color in Raw. With Profile set to Color and the saturation at -100 it opens in grayscale despite not having Monochrone Profile selected. 

TheDigitalDog
Inspiring
February 17, 2021

What do mean by Grayscale instead of RGB; when you open it and examine the embedded profile, it shows what; and when you look at the color channles, are there one or three?

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"
gary_sc
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 17, 2021

Andrew,

 

It's opening up as Grayscale, that's the issue. 

 

All that was done was to take the Saturation slider and shove it to the left (zero). Then click on "Open."

 

TheDigitalDog
Inspiring
February 18, 2021

Indeed, that's gotta be a bug. I tried it too, san's Bridge anywhere near the test. 

My Workflow Options set for ProPhoto RGB.

-100 Saturation, I end up with a grayscale document; not good. 

-99 I get ProPhoto RGB.

This makes no sense and needs to be fixed. In the meantime, the -99 Sat works kind of, sorta, 

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"
gary_sc
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 5, 2021

First off, congrats, you've discovered a very curious thing. When I first started reading your question, I was going: "Well of course it would be considered a B&W image, that's what removing the Saturations does. But then I realized that it actually changed the image's mode. 

 

That was curious, and I agree that it should not be doing that.

 

However, I'm not sure I'm following your steps to Save the image into RGB. From where are you saving? PS? ACR? What steps are you doing this?

carynorton
Inspiring
February 5, 2021

Hey Gary, glad to see a familiar person reply to my post. Ha

 

So the steps are as follows:

 

In Bridge, I open a file (Command + R) in ACR. Most of the time it's a CR3, but I tested it with a jpg too (jpg was a color image in RGB color mode and in sRGB color space). 

 

Once open in ACR, I pull all the saturation out, effectively making it a BW image, but I have not hit the "BW" button in the main editing area in ACR. 

 

From here, if I hit "Open", the image will open in Photoshop and will be in Grayscale color mode. If I hit "Save" instead, it will save to the specified location, but it will save it in RGB color mode, which is what I want. 

 

Is that more clear?

gary_sc
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 5, 2021

Hi Cary,

 

Well the one thing you left out was that you saved it as a something else. I saved it as a psd and that indeed did have the RGB format. (When you save it as another dng, open that dng, then open that into PS it remains as a BW images, that's what was throwing me off.

 

I'm stumped. Let me ask around and see what I can find. If anyone reading this knows the answer, please speak up!