Reference
Black and White Photography Glossary
Short definitions for the technique, camera filter, and editing terms used across Black and White Filter - from Rec. 709 and channel mix to yellow filters, grain, and vignette.
Technique Terms
Channel Mix
A grayscale method that lets you weigh red, green, and blue independently and adjust them after conversion - for example, darkening a blue sky without affecting skin tones. It's the same principle used by Photoshop's Black & White adjustment layer, and it offers more creative control than a fixed formula like Rec. 709, at the cost of needing manual adjustment per photo.
Desaturation
Reducing an image's saturation to zero. Unlike a proper luminosity conversion, desaturation converts each pixel using the same formula regardless of hue, which tends to flatten tonal separation - a red apple and a green leaf of similar brightness can end up looking almost identical in gray.
Luminosity vs desaturation · Grayscale photo filter (Rec. 709)
Grayscale
An image made up only of shades of gray, with no color information. "Grayscale" describes the result; "black and white" and "monochrome" are used more loosely to mean the same thing, though monochrome technically just means "one color" and can include toned images like sepia.
Luminosity / Luma
The brightness value of a pixel, independent of its hue. Grayscale conversion works by discarding color and keeping only luminosity, so how a conversion tool weighs red, green, and blue when calculating that brightness determines how the final image looks.
Monochrome
Literally "one color." In photography this usually means grayscale, but a sepia-toned or blue-toned image is also technically monochrome - it just isn't neutral gray. When a filter claims to be "monochrome" but adds a color cast, that's why.
Grayscale vs B&W vs monochrome · Sepia photo filter · Blue tone monochrome filter
Rec. 601
An older luminosity standard (weighted closer to 29.9% red, 58.7% green, 11.4% blue), originally defined for standard-definition television. Some legacy tools still default to it; it produces slightly different midtones than Rec. 709, particularly in red-heavy images like portraits.
Rec. 709
A luminosity weighting standard - 21.26% red, 71.52% green, 7.22% blue - used across broadcast and most modern digital imaging pipelines, including Black and White Filter's own conversion. Because green is weighted so heavily, green-dominant scenes render with more midtone detail than a flat average-RGB conversion would produce.
Camera Filter Terms
These describe physical glass filters used on film cameras, most of which predate digital editing by decades. Their effects are echoed digitally by curves and presets.
How traditional filters map to High Key, Balanced, and Low Key
80A / 80B Filter
Blue color-correction filters designed to balance daylight color film for tungsten lighting. Like the 85B, these exist for color-temperature correction rather than black and white contrast - on B&W film, their blue tint would very mildly lighten blue tones rather than darken them, the opposite direction from a yellow or orange filter.
85B Filter
A color-correction filter (amber/orange) designed to balance tungsten-lit color film for daylight shooting. It isn't a contrast filter and has no defined use on black and white film - its amber tint would act only very mildly like a weak orange filter if used on B&W stock.
B&W Viewing Filter
A handheld filter - often orange or neutral gray-tinted glass, historically sold by brands like Tiffen - that photographers look through before shooting to preview how a scene's colors will separate in black and white, without having to guess or shoot test frames.
Cokin Filter Kit
A modular square filter system consisting of a lens-mounted holder and interchangeable glass or resin filters, including graduated neutral density, color correction, and black and white contrast filters. Popular because one holder accepts many filter types without rebuying adapter rings per lens.
Filter Glass
The optical glass or resin element inside a physical camera filter. Quality varies by material and coating - cheaper glass can introduce softness or color shift, which is part of why branded kits like Tiffen or Cokin carry a price premium over generic filter glass.
Orange Filter
Darkens blue skies more strongly than a yellow filter and boosts contrast between skin tones and foliage. A common middle-ground choice for landscape and portrait work on black and white film.
Red Filter
The strongest of the classic contrast filters - it darkens blue sky dramatically, sometimes to near-black, and produces the high-drama look associated with dramatic B&W landscape photography. Digitally, this effect is closest to a Low Key preset with contrast pushed up.
Skylight 1B Filter
Similar to a UV filter but with a very slight warm/pink tint, designed to correct a cool color cast in color photography. On black and white film its effect is negligible - it functions mainly as a protective filter.
UV Filter
A clear or near-clear filter that blocks ultraviolet light and reduces atmospheric haze. It has almost no visible tonal effect on black and white film and is mostly used to protect the lens rather than shape the image.
Yellow Filter
A warm-colored glass filter that lightens yellow tones and mildly darkens blue skies on black and white film, giving clouds more separation from the sky without an unnatural look. The mildest of the three classic contrast filters.
Editing & Effect Terms
Contrast
The difference between the darkest and lightest tones in an image. Raising contrast after a grayscale conversion deepens blacks and lifts whites, which restores visual depth that color removal can otherwise flatten.
Duotone
An image rendered using two tones instead of a full gray range - typically a dark color mapped to shadows and a light color mapped to highlights, with grayscale values in between. Distinct from a simple tint, since duotone uses two colors rather than one cast over gray.
Exposure
The overall brightness of an image, set at the point of capture by shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, or adjusted afterward in editing. In a grayscale conversion, exposure and contrast work together - exposure sets the overall brightness level, contrast reshapes the spread between darks and lights within that level.
Adjust brightness in the tool · High key vs low key vs balanced
Grain
Fine random texture added to mimic the look of physical film. Digitally it's simulated noise layered over the image; used sparingly it adds texture, used heavily it recreates the look of high-ISO black and white film stock. Combined with vignette, grain is one of the fastest ways to push a clean digital conversion toward a vintage look (including looks people sometimes search for as VHS or Y2K styles).
Halftone
A printing technique that simulates continuous tone using patterns of dots, lines, or other small marks instead of smooth gradients - the effect used in newspaper photo printing and comic book shading. It's a different underlying technique from a luminosity or curve-based grayscale conversion, closer to vector or print reproduction than tonal adjustment.
Negative
An inverted image, where light and dark values are flipped - what was black becomes white and vice versa. Named for the intermediate negative image produced during traditional film development, before printing reversed it back to a positive.
Noise
Random pixel-level variation introduced by a camera sensor, most visible at high ISO or in low light - an unwanted digital artifact rather than a stylistic choice. Grain is often added deliberately to recreate a film look; noise is usually something photographers try to reduce, not add. The two get confused because they look similar, but they come from opposite intentions.
Posterize / Threshold
Techniques that collapse an image down to a small number of tones instead of a smooth gray range. Threshold is the most extreme version - every pixel becomes pure black or pure white with nothing in between, producing a high-contrast line-art look. Posterize is a softer version that allows a few gray steps rather than just two. Neither is a grayscale conversion method on its own; both are applied after an image is already in black and white.
Sepia
A specific brown-toned tint, originally the result of a chemical process used to make early black and white photographic prints more stable and long-lasting. Now used as a stylistic filter to evoke an aged or vintage photograph.
Tint
A subtle color cast applied over an otherwise grayscale image - sepia (brown) and cool blue are the most common. A tinted grayscale image is technically monochrome but not neutral black and white.
Vignette
Darkening toward the edges of a frame while keeping the center clear, drawing the eye inward. Combined with grain, it's one of the fastest ways to push a clean digital conversion toward a vintage or film-inspired look.
Color Splash / Selective Color
A look that keeps one hue range in full color while converting the rest of the image to black and white. Useful for emphasizing a single accent - such as a red coat or blue door - against a gray scene.
Try it on a photo
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