Everything else in this section is about the ways paper falls short of a screen: duller blues, lifted blacks, colours that cannot be reproduced at all.
Black and white is the exception. With no colours to reproduce, the whole problem disappears — what is left is how dark the ink gets and how bright the paper is, and matte paper handles the range between them well.
The practical result: a black-and-white photograph frequently prints closer to what you saw than a colour one does.
Four things it rescues
1. Mixed or wrong light. A room lit by a warm bulb and a tube light gives one face two colour casts. In black and white there is no cast to have. Why indoor photographs print orange →
2. Old scans and faded prints. A 1978 photograph that has gone orange with age converts cleanly. The fading was a colour problem and there is now no colour.
3. Photographs with an ugly background. A bright blue plastic chair, a hoarding, a mismatched wall. Colour draws the eye to it; monochrome does not.
4. A set that will not sit together. Twenty photographs from twenty different years, each with its own colour character, look like twenty separate things on a spread. Converted, they read as one series — which is why archive sections of long books are often monochrome.
When not to convert
| Keep the colour | Why |
|---|---|
| Anything where the colour is the subject | A sari, a festival, a repainted room |
| Food | It rarely survives conversion |
| Skin as the point of the photograph | Colour carries more of a face than people expect |
| A recent, well-lit photograph | There is nothing to rescue |
| Because it looks “artistic” | It is not a substitute for a good photograph |
⚠️ Converting a weak colour photograph produces a weak monochrome one. It rescues specific problems — cast, background, inconsistency — and it does not rescue composition or focus.
Old family prints: convert, or keep the colour?
Conversion is not the only rescue for an old print. A colour cast, general fading, small tears and dust on an old photograph are usually fixable, and when you send old prints we tell you honestly which ones will hold up. So the question is not whether a 1980s print can be saved but whether you want its colour.
| Keep the colour | Convert |
|---|---|
| The colour carries information — the bride’s sari, the old scooter, the house before it was repainted | The print is stained or blotched unevenly, not just tinted |
| The rest of that decade’s photographs are colour too | It sits beside genuine black-and-white prints from an earlier generation |
| The cast is even and mild | The cast differs from one print to the next and the set will not sit together |
The colour of an old print is part of the record: a 1985 photograph looks like 1985 partly because of the film it was shot on. Take that away only when it is doing damage. Printing photographs taken on film → Old photographs in a book for parents →
Sepia is not black and white
Phone editors offer “vintage”, “sepia” and “old film” looks beside the plain monochrome filter. Sepia is a brown tint, which makes it a colour photograph again, with all the reproduction problems this page began by escaping. Printed, a heavy sepia can come out muddier than it looked on the phone.
Avoid filters that add fake scratches, grain or a burnt border as well. On paper they read as real damage, and they are indistinguishable from it to anyone who did not see you apply them.
Mixing the two in one book
It works, and it needs a rule rather than a mood.
Good rules: a whole section, a whole decade, everything from before a certain year, or every photograph of one place. Bad rule: whichever ones looked better converted — that reads as indecision across a spread.
Facing pages should match. One colour and one monochrome photograph opposite each other is the arrangement that looks like a mistake. Photo book layout: how spreads actually work →
Do it before sending
We do not convert photographs to black and white on our own. That is the same reasoning as with skin tones — a colour photograph may be colour deliberately, and choosing for you would be guessing. Skin tones in print →
Every phone editor has a black-and-white filter. Convert, look at it, and send the version you want printed.
One technical note
A converted photograph is still a colour file. That is fine — nothing needs to be done to it, and there is no separate monochrome process to ask for.
What does help is checking the contrast after converting: a photograph that relied on colour to separate its subject from its background can come out flat once the colour is removed, and a small contrast lift fixes it.
Three checks on the phone before you send:
- Shrink it. Look at the converted photograph at roughly the size it will print, not zoomed in. A face that only separates from a red wall at full size will merge with it on a third of a page.
- Look at the faces. If skin has gone a flat mid-grey, lift brightness slightly — a dark monochrome file prints darker still.
- Check the whites. A white shirt or a wedding dress should keep some detail. If it has turned into a blank patch, pull the highlights down a touch.
Then look at the proof as a set of spreads, which is where you see whether the colour and monochrome pages sit together the way you intended. Why printed colours differ from screens →
Frequently asked
Does black and white print better than colour? Often closer to what you saw, yes — there are no colours for paper to fail to reproduce.
When should I convert a photo to black and white? When the light was mixed or wrong, when an old photograph has gone orange, when the background is distracting, or to make a mixed-year set sit together.
Will you convert my photos? Not on our own initiative — a colour photograph may be colour on purpose. Convert the ones you want before sending, so the choice is yours.
Can I mix colour and black and white in one book? Yes, with a rule — a whole section or a whole decade. Facing pages should match.
Does converting fix a bad photo? No. It fixes colour problems, not composition or focus.
Part of our guide to paper and printing. See also: why printed colours differ from screens and skin tones in print.
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