By default, your smartphone takes photos in color. If we need black and white photos, we can use an image editor app on the phone or a computer to convert them to black and white. If like, you can configure the camera app settings on the phone to directly take black and white pictures. In this article, we will use a Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime phone to show you how to do that. Note that you can always convert a color picture to black and white, but you can’t make a black and white picture color again. Also if you are using a different phone or phone model, you may not have this feature to capture black and white photos using the stock camera app. If you have this trouble, you may consider to download and use third party camera apps.
Take black & white photos with your Samsung mobile phone
Run the Camera app on your Samsung phone, tap the Settings icon at the top left corner, choose the Filter effects, you can then access all available camera filters on the Samsung device. Different Samsung mobiles may come with different filters & effects. Some Samsung phone models support additional filters downloading.
In the camera app, look for the camera modes or options. This can typically be found by swiping left or right on the screen or by tapping an icon that represents different camera modes.
Find and touch the Gray Scale to add the filter effect. From now on, all photos taken using the stock Camera app on the phone will be black and white pictures until you change the filter effects or change it back to No effect in the settings. So do not forget to change the filter effects back to the default which is No effect later on. As we have mentioned above you can always convert a color picture to black and white, but you can’t make a black and white picture color again. Other than Gray Scale filter effect, you can also select Sepia, a specialized treatment or toning to make warmer black-and-white photos.
Other phones or phone models may offer even more camera filters to help you take black and white pictures on the phone. On some models, look for the Mono or Black & White mode, within the Camera app, which is specifically designed for taking black and white photos.
Convert color photos to black & white on your Samsung mobile phone
What to do with color photos already taken and saved in our Gallery albums on Samsung phone? If you have not configured the Camera settings to shoot photos in Black and White, you need to use a photo editor to convert them into Black and White manually.
Samsung Galaxy phones may come pre-loaded with the Photos app made by Samsung. If not, you can also download it from Samsung App store. It is made by Samsung and totally free to download and use. Open the image or picture in full color in the Gallery app on Samsung mobile, touch the Edit (pencil icon) at the upper right section to open the Photos app, then touch Color >> Saturation at the bottom. You can then slide the saturation bar to the left to create B&W pictures or convert color photos to black and white, see below screenshot.
Tap the Save button to save the black and white image as a new one in your Gallery app without overwriting original photo in your album.
Of course, you can also turn color photos into black and white by applying filters provided in the Photos editor app by Samsung electronics. Give it a shot by yourself, we will not discuss further in this article.
Record black & white videos on Samsung mobile phone
The above camera filter effects setting also affect the video recording on the phone. If you have applied the filters for black and white photos, you can also use the Camera app to shoot videos in black and white.