The Advanced Guide to Black & White Presets in Lightroom – Photo Premium

With the release of Lightroom 3, Adobe has taken feedback from end users hungry for more black and white conversion options. In this article I will take a look at twenty of these conversion methods, exploring how they effect four different photos and their pros and cons. By the time I am finished, I hope you will be curious about exploring this fun, and timeless, photographic expression.

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The Setup

Starting at the start, I selected four unedited photographs. One of a few brightly colored musicians in Morocco, a lion seated in the tall grass of the Serengeti, basecamp drying-out day in Nepal, and a portrait of Ali’i, owner of Ali’i Kula Lavender Farms on Maui, Hawaii.

I will be including a screen shot of how the histogram changes for the first photo from Morocco with every new B&W conversion. This histogram is the most active and a good representation of what is affected. I will also be including a screen shot of the change in sliders in the Develop module.

Here is the starting point for the histogram and sliders for the Morocco photo:

And these are the original colour photos, completely unedited:

Finally, here is a complete list of the Lightroom Presets to be used in this tutorial:

The B&W Presets are divided into two groups; Creative and Filter. The first group attempts to impart a particular look, while the second group simulates traditional B&W filters placed over the lens or used while creating a print in a darkroom.

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Lightroom is a wonderful application, and today’s Premium tutorial will help you really get to grips with black and white conversion in an advanced way.

The tutorial continues on to look at each of the Lightroom presets individually, carefully explaining what each does and what type of photo it’s best suited to. It’s a really valuable set of information for anyone interested in converting their images to black and white.

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