by David W. Powell
Color to B&W from within Lightroom
I have used Silver Effects Pro and other Photoshop plug-ins for years to convert from Color to B&W, and loved them, but lately I’ve been working in Lr first. Here’s how:
The color shot.
Create a Virtual Copy (Ctrl+’) of your optimized RAW file.
The simplest and least effective thing to do is, in the Develop module, in the Basic panel, pull the saturation slider (the last one under Presence) all the way to 0. This converts all colors to their equivalent shades of grey.
Ho-Humm. About what one would expect. Here is where I used to dive for Silver Effects Pro.
But, look what I did before leaving Lr.
Create another Virtual Copy (Ctrl+’) of your optimized RAW file. You sucked the color out of the first copy.
At the very top of the Basic panel (still in the Develop module) click on Black & White. The third panel down is B&W with eight color sliders. These sliders brighten and darken the grey value of their respective colors. For instance, I pulled the blue down to darken the sky, pushed the red up to add contrast to the rocks, and pushed the greens up to brighten the leaves… etc. This is real control.
Red +100 rocks
Orange +67 rocks
Yellow +100 grass
Green +25 trees
Aqua 0
Blue – 56 sky
Purple +47 rocks
Magenta 0
Now, dive for the plugins! If you still feel the need.
Please let me know what you think.
Dave Powell
davidwesleypowell@gmail.com
davidwpowellphotography.com
Hello David,
This very technique is the reason that I finally gave up on B&W film. I used to carry around a set of red, orange, and yellow filters to enhance the sky and other things in my photos. This I learned this from reading Ansel Adams’s books, and it did give you some control over aspects of your pictures. A co-worker of mine showed me how to do this in Lightroom (Lr) and I started looking at digital cameras for the first time. The fine detail you can get with Light Room (Lr) changed everything. With Lr you can control all of the colors to any degree you wish. Marvelous!
I have never tried Silver Effects Pro or any other B&W specific pug-ins. I have never felt like I needed them but maybe I should give them a try.
Mike