A black and white image is just a desaturated image, right? Not necessarily. There’s more than one way of making a black and white photo, and depending on the effect you want to achieve, you might be missing out on options to enhance your creativity.
Desaturating an image in Lightroom is a quick way to turn an image from color to monochrome. Grab the Saturation slider and drag it all the way down to zero. Done. However, this isn’t always the best way to create a black and white image.
Creating a black and white image this way gives you almost zero control over the balance of dark and light in your image (beyond the standard editing tools like exposure, contrast etc). Instead, try this way to give you more control.
Making a black and white photo in Lightroom
In the Edit panel, switch the Profile to Adobe Monochrome. Scroll down to the Color panel, and you’ll see B&W Mixer. Open this and you will have a set of sliders that affect the brightness of each color in your image.
Using these sliders, you can target specific areas of your image and determine how black and white that color should be rendered in your final image.
You can use these sliders to make your subject stand out more from the background, for example by darkening green for an outside photo. Targeting the skin tone colors in your image can help you smooth redness and imperfections and create a flawless finish — no healing tool required.
Making a black and white photo using the B&W Mixer gives you much more control over the final product, and that means more freedom in your creativity.
What’s your favorite method for making black and white images? Do you shoot for black and white, or convert in post-production? Share in the comments below.
Hello friends Jemma shows an easy way to convert to b&w. 👏👏👏 My tip on top of that: Refine the color, contrast and saturation before converting the image. This makes for more contrast in black and white as a starting point.
Excellent point Klaus! It is a great idea to edit first then convert to black and white.
Personally, I usually set my camera to black and white before shooting. If it looks good in black and white and you opt for the color raw version, most of your basic settings will be correct. I shoot a lot of things with the intention of having a black and white end product. Your editing tips were good. I don’t like to spend time I could be shooting editing photos so my goal is to do as little work to them as possible.
That’s an interesting technique Paul, and sounds like a time saver. Thanks for the tip!
I do a lot like Klaus here below. I start in similar way as with colour. Highlighs, black, lifting the shadows. Clarence to increase contrasts – not too muc though – then I go to the colour canals in b&w and tweek them around till i am pleased – I may go again to basic and tone curve to make the final tweeks – masks come in handy at the finish, but still I end in the basic and tone curve to make the final touch. Since I use raw format I take all photos in colours, but I often… Read more »
Good technique Anna. I also decide in post that I like something in black and white better. It seems to work well for highlighting the emotion in documentary style photos.