Perfect black & white?
There’s no denying it, I’m obsessed with black and white photography.
If you look back through my portfolio, you’ll find that a huge percentage of it is black and white. A majority for sure. Why? I think I just see the world that way, whereas some photographers see colours and use them to create moods and tones, I see the world in light and shadow. I just find most images much more pleasing to my eye devoid of colour. Perhaps it comes from growing up shooting mostly black and white film? The two student films I made at college were both in black and white. Like I said, I’m obsessed.
But achieving a decent black and white conversion from a colour, digital image is actually quite hard. I edit my work in Lightroom Classic and sure, there is a one click b&w conversion and there are even b&w presets specifically for portraits and landscapes and everything in between. But to me, the results are far from pleasing, the results are often just plain old 18% grey. Middle grey, to me, is NOT black and white. There should be a broad tonal range across the image, from deep blacks to crisp whites (I’m pretty sure there’s a photographer who designed a whole system around this concept, but I’m not in the zone for talking about that today). Instead, what I am going to talk about, is how through some trial and error, I’ve created a preset in Lightroom that acts a starting point for what I call “Perfect black and white”. Will it be perfect to every photographer’s eye? Of course not, but that’s what is so great about the subjectivity of art. We all have our own eyes, our own tastes and our own opinions and that is okay. There are really no rules when it comes to photography, although a lot of people would tell you there is. But I often find that those rules are yelled about by so called “experts” (mostly on social media) just a way to belittle other photographers and try and bring more credibility to their own work. But that’s maybe a topic for another day.
I wanted to find a way, in Lightroom to create the kind of images I wanted to see. At first, I would just use the contrast slider and strengthen the difference between the light and the shadows and whilst that works to a very small point, it is not the best way. Just adjusting contrast can suck detail from highlights and/or shadows and when you look a little closer can destroy an image. So I set about playing with the various settings available within the program to tweak the images to find the right balance.
The original, unedited RAW image.
I love deep blacks, shadows that fall off but just retain enough detail. I love the mystery that it can create within an image. I loved film noir as a teenager, perhaps another influence.
So having, found what I think is the “perfect” group of settings, let me talk you through it, step by step, so you can start creating your own “perfect black and white” photographs. Give it a go and let me know in the comments what you thought.
So let’s use this portrait as an example. This is Sancha, she owns Cabin Coffeehouse in Exmouth, Devon and it is my regular haunt. If you haven’t been… GO! It’s great. Check them out on Instagram @cabincoffeehouse. This first image is the original RAW file, as you can see, the light was really nice, the low winter sun was streaming in through the windows of the cafe and the Christmas fairy lights were catching in her eyes. I shot this wide open at F/4, 1/100th sec at ISO 1250. To me, the RAW, with no editing is actually really pleasing and would look great with only minor tweaks. But this is a post about creating b&w images, so of course that is where we are going.
So, we could just click the B&W button in Lightroom and be done with it. But take a look at that option below… it looks flat, it looks boring, it looks grey. So that’s a no from me.
So, how do I create something better than that? Follow along with the steps below and you’ll be creating your own “perfect” black and white images in no time. (There’s also a video below where I show you and talk through each step).
Step 1 - Desaturate
The first thing you’re going to do, is go down to the HSL sliders and select SATURATION. You’ll then go through each colour channel and fully desaturate each one. What you’ll be left with, is pretty similar to the automatic B&W function we looked at before, just maybe with slightly more contrast, so already we are winning.
The original image, with the Lightroom BNW preset applied.
Then, go back up to the WHITE BALANCE slider and move the TEMPERATURE and TINT sliders, all the way to the left. You’ll see as you adjust the white balance that it can throw all of the tonal range out of whack, but don’t worry the tint will bring it back, as will the other changes we will make.
Step 2 - Blacks, whites, shadows and grain
Go up to the TONE panel and set BLACKS to -35, WHITES to +50 and SHADOWS to +50. At this point we haven’t touched the EXPOSURE slider and we most definitely (nor will we ever) touch CONTRAST. Then set CLARITY to + 20.
I’ll then go down to the EFFECTS panel and set GRAIN to +25, I’ll leave SIZE and ROUGHNESS at +25 and +50. I like to add in a bit of grain just to give it that slightly filmic look. But I’ll only add, if like in this photo I have shot at a relatively low ISO (crazy that modern cameras mean you can categorise 1250 as low). If the image is already too noisy I won’t add more in and I might even reduce it a bit using the tools in Lightroom.
Step 3 - Black-ground
Now, go to the MASKING panel and create a new mask, selecting BACKGROUND. This will separate your subject from the background and allow you to tweak settings solely for the background of the image. You’ll then want to reduce the BLACKS to -60. You can also play around with the TEXTURE and CLARITY at this point if you want to add a little more, or less detail to your background. But play around with this in each image to suit your taste.
Step 4 - Exposure
The final edit… Perfect black and white?
The final step, is to adjust the exposure of the image to finish it off. Generally, I will adjust between negative 1 stop and 1/2 a stop dependent on the image. This will just pull the blacks a little deeper and give the overall image that nice black and white, rather than grey finish.
So there you have it, my recipe for a “perfect black and white” photograph in a few simple steps. Once you’ve dialled in the basic settings, be sure to save this as a preset in Lightroom so that you can use it again. Then, all you need to do for each image, is mask and adjust the background and adjust the exposure to finish. This will give you consistent images every time that will just be so much sumptuous to look at.
Let me know if you use these settings and what you think, or anything you’d do differently to perfect the result. Of course, these methods may not be to everyone’s taste, but that’s okay. We are all different, but this works for me, this is my style.
Thanks for reading, make sure to check out the video below as well and please let me know any thoughts in the comments below.