Monochrome images - RGB or greyscale?

[StevieGill]

Hi

I take all my photos in colour (RAW format) and convert to black and white in post-process. After applying the conversion method of your choice is it best to change the workspace to greyscale or is there an advantage to remaining in RGB?

[MiniChris]

Stay in RGB as you retain much more color information. If you are using Photoshop, do a channel mix in monochrome and adjust your image to the B&W elements that suit your fancy and then same as a jpeg, or if printing out, tif file. B&W Grayscale only records 256 variations of black and white. It's not much to work with.
Best is to fork our some British Sterling and buy Silver Efex Pro.

[Sonic4Spuds]

Steve,

In theory it doesn't matter if you are in rgb or greyscale, as they give the same number of color steps on a greyscale image. There are advantages to remaining in rgb, as some filters don't work on greyscale images, and you can tint the image any color or do partial color images. On the other hand a pure greyscale image will be much smaller.

On saving for viewing/printing I normally save all of my edits as PNG images, as they're both compressed and lossless. If you save as PNG you can create an indexed color image, giving 256 values in color which allows you to save a tinted greyscale with almost as small a size as a pure greyscale image.

-Sonic