Battery Point lighthouse. Using Lightroom Classic’s Profiles, Color Grading, Post Crop Vignetting and Radial Filter tools to create a strong black and white image.
Toning
Toning is a popular technique in black and white photography where a chemical tint is added as the print is being developed. Now, you can of course do the same thing digitally.
Sepia toning is popular for creating a vintage look, but selenium toning can add a richer, colder tone, while cyanotypes – strictly speaking, a different chemical process – have a much stronger blue tone.
Split toning is becoming popular too, where shadows (the darker parts of the picture) are given one tone and highlights (the brighter parts) another. Lightroom offers a Split Toning panel, for example.
With digital imaging, toning isn't restricted to black and white. You can also add a tone, or a split tone, to colour images as an alternative to white balance or colour adjustments.
How to customise Analog Efex Pro presets
Analog Efex Pro, part of the DxO Nik Collection, has some great vintage film effect presets, but you don’t have to use them exactly as they are provided. It’s very easy to customise and adapt these presets to give exactly the kind of look you want.
How to get started with Analog Efex Pro
Analog Efex Pro is one of the plug-ins in the Nik Collection. It works as a plug in with Lightroom Classic and Photoshop but it can also work as a standalone program or as an external editor with all sorts of other programs like Capture One, Exposure X and more. It’s designed to recreate the […]
How to get started with Silver Efex Pro
Silver Efex Pro is one of the best-known plug ins in the Nik Collection and widely regarded as the premier tools for fans of black and white photography. There are lots of really good ways to create black and white images in all sorts of software, but even now Silver Efex Pro has a magic […]
How to get great black and white in DxO PhotoLab… but you’ll need FilmPack 5
DxO PhotoLab can create superb black and white imagery, both in terms of image quality and in creative control, but you need to get the DxO FilmPack 5 Elite add-on to do it. This does make things more expensive, and it does feel a bit like you’re paying for some things that other programs offer […]
How to use the Lightroom Split Toning feature
Split toning is a more advanced variation on the old technique of toning. It applies a different coloured tone to the shadows and the highlights in the picture, producing an interesting graded colour effect. It’s often used to give images a subtle, ‘fine art’ look, but it’s not always easy to get right. Split toning […]
Try out this Silver Efex Pro tutorial for subtle black and white portrait effects
Successful black and white photography sometimes gets its power from strong contrasts and graphic shapes, and sometimes it relies on subtlety and control. Silver Efex Pro, now taken over by DxO in the Nik Collection, can do both. In principle, you should be able to do all these things in Photoshop, but in practice I […]