It’s easy to convert a color image to black and white in any photo editor, Lightroom included, but to get a strong black and white look you often have to do a little more besides. This video, above, offers a simple two-step approach for outdoor shots like this one, but you can also follow the steps below if you want to take your time and properly absorb each step.
01 Lightroom’s B&W mode
You’ll find this in the Basic panel in develop mode. By default, images will open in color, but this button does exactly what it says, swapping your photo to black and white.
02 B&W mode
This is only one way to convert color images into black and white in Lightroom. Another is to use a preset, while a third method is to use a black and white profile, and you can browse for profiles in the Basic panel. Some of these profiles will automatically switch to Lightroom’s B&W mode anyway, while others may change the colors into shades of gray without swapping modes. It’s just something to be aware of because the B&W mode changes the available controls…
03 The B&W panel
When you swap to the B&W mode, Lightroom also swaps the regular Color Mixer panel for a new B&W panel. The significance of this is that you can now adjust the way colors translate into shades of gray, just like using color filters on the camera lens when shooting in black and white or the Channel Mixer in Photoshop.
If you increase the value for one of the color ranges, it translates into a lighter shade of gray. Similarly, if you want to darken a blue sky, you can reduce the value of the Blue slider.
But it’s also possible to make much more precise changes with the targeted adjustment gadget in the top left corner of the B&W panel. With this selected, you can just drag downwards on a color in the image that you want to darken – such as this blue sky – and it will adjust the sliders for you.
04 Tone Curve adjustments in black and white
Black and white photography typically depends on strong tonal contrasts, so that contrasts that may be OK in color are not strong enough in black and white – and this image is a good example.
So what I’ve done here is switch to the Tone Curve panel and use a classic curve shape for increasing contrast. You drag down a control point in the lower part of the range to make the shadows darker, and drag another control point upwards higher in the tonal range to lighten the highlights. This makes the section of the curve between these points much steeper, and this is where the extra contrast comes from.
05 Before and after
This has been a simple two-step color to black and white conversion without any complex extra steps. It’s designed to complement these strong, architectural shapes in a straightforward way, though of course there’s a lot more you can do in Lightroom to enhance black and white photography.
