Lightroom in Black and White

Making photos black and white is a separate treatment today, but for much of the history of photography, it was the only option—color film first didn’t existent, and then was often too expensive for most people to process. Even long after color did become the norm, black and white remains a popular artistic choice. Now, of course, we can create the effect easily in software. Converting a color photo to black and white isn’t just a matter of removing the color saturation, however. In Lightroom and Lightroom Classic, you’ll find multiple methods of making photos black and white and fine-tuning the appearance for the look you want. Most photo editing programs offer similar options, but I’m focusing just on the two current versions of Lightroom for this article. You’ll find the controls in the Edit panel of Lightroom (the newer cloud-based app, until recently called Lightroom CC) and the Develop module in Lightroom Classic, depending on which version you use.

One-click B&W

The easiest method is to let the software handle the conversion with a single click of the B&W button in Lightroom, or the Black & White option under Treatment in Lightroom Classic. This is the quick approach that produces basically the same effect as reducing the Saturation slider to –100, converting all color values to grayscale.

Profiles and Presets

The next-easiest path to black and white is to select one of Lightroom’s presets, which incorporate tone adjustments that are good

for some situations. For example, the B&W High Contrast preset features an increased Whites value and decreased Blacks value to accentuate the difference in tones. In Lightroom, click the Presets button at the bottom of the Edit panel, and then select one of the options under B&W in the panel that appears. In Lightroom Classic, reveal the Presets list in the side panel at the left side of the editing area, and choose an option under B&W.

Sharp-eyed readers will notice that choosing some of the presets also changes the Profile setting in the Edit panel (Lightroom) and Basic panel (Lightroom Classic). Whereas presets are saved collections of settings, profiles are instructions for interpreting the image data, and have no effect on individual tone settings. You can assign a profile and then manipulate tone controls on top of that. Lightroom includes several black and white profiles, (un)helpfully named “B&W 01,” “B&W 04,” and so on, but they all provide specific looks that can either be what you’re looking for or a good starting point for further editing. One advantage to profiles is the ability to tap into the same recipes that camera manufacturers use to develop their raw images. For instance, when editing raw files from my Fujifilm camera, one option is “Camera ACROS v2,” one of Fuji’s profiles. In both Lightroom and Lightroom Classic, choose one of the options listed next to Profile, or click the Browse All Profiles button, expand the B&W list, and click the profile you want to apply. As you drag over each thumbnail, the effect is temporarily applied to the image as a preview. The Amount slider that appears beneath the profile (Lightroom) or above the thumbnails (Lightroom Classic) lets you set the intensity of the profile’s effect. Click the star icon in the corner of a thumbnail to save that profile as a favorite for faster access later.

The Colors of Black and White

It may seem as if the color has been drained from a black and white image, but it’s still there, leading to greater specificity in how the grayscale tones are rendered. This ability gives you a lot of latitude in editing areas dominated by one color. For instance, when adjusting a color photo with large swathes of green, you can manipulate just how dark or light the green hues are represented in grayscale. Want a darker sky? Push the Blue or Aqua sliders to the left. In Lightroom, convert the image to black and white using one of the methods outlined above, and then open the Color pane. Click the B&W Mixer button to the right, which reveals sliders for each color channel. (in Lightroom for iOS and Android, you’ll see a Gray Mix pane, where you can select a hue and adjust its luminance). When you change one of those, the effect applies only to that hue in the image.

Another option is to use the Targeted Adjustment Tool (TAT) to specify a sample area. Click the tool and position the mouse pointer over a spot you want to darken or lighten; the sliders that will be affected appear as tiny dots near the pointer. Drag up or down to affect their brightness. In Lightroom Classic, the Color pane becomes the B & W pane once the image has been converted and includes the same sliders and TAT. In both applications, you can also click the Auto button to see how the software interprets the image.

A Black and White Exercise

In many cases, switching a color image to black and white will result in a perfectly fine image. And sometimes the presets and profiles might be exactly what you’re looking for. Once you understand how the colors are interpreted, though, and how to adjust their appearances, you can edit your black and white photos more to your liking. I’ll leave you with a quick exercise to help you see the potential of black and white scenes. If your camera has this feature, set it to capture photos in Raw+JPEG and set the JPEG to save in a black and white simulation. On some cameras, the scene in the viewfinder and the LCD will preview the black and white version before you take the shot. You can then look at the black and white versions on the camera, or compare them with the color raw versions after you import them into Lightroom.