Warrior 1 Sean McCormack

There’s a lazy, hazy feel to this photo. You could almost imagine it’s taken from a deckchair by the water.

The sun is blown out, but we should be able to get some of the details back around the edges. The sensor on the camera is a warren of dust bunnies, some of which are hiding in the shot, so I’ll need to fix them. While others might be tempted to fix the haze, I actually think it’s a key element in the photo, so

I’m going to enhance it.

The final thing I’m going to do is create a black-and-white version of the photo. The colours are quite muted, so the options are to either remove the colours or amplify them. I’ll then add a warm tone to match the scene, plus some grain.

1 Clean up dust spots

Every time you change a lens, you’re letting dust in. The charge on the sensor attracts this dust, where it likes to settle unseen – until you use landscape apertures like f/11-f/22. Then they’re everywhere.

Lightroom’s Spot Removal tool saves the day; press Q to start. You can either click for a circular spot, or drag to create a shape. Lightroom will select an area to clone from. Change Size to match the spot size, Feather to soften the blending edge, and Opacity to fade. Clone copies the source area, while Heal blends the source with the destination surroundings.

Spots can be hard to see, but the Visualize Spots overlay allows you to see the spots better. It’s accessed via the A key. Spots show as regular shapes like circle or ovals; click on the spots to remove them.

2 Enhance contrast and haze

Pulling Highlights to -100 in the Basic panel helps recover that missing sun detail, and gives a much improved sun-star effect. It also brings back some detail in the hills below the sun. I want to retain contrast, while increasing haze, so I set Clarity to +47 and Dehaze to -6. That negative Dehaze adds more fog to the photo.

In the process we’ve lost the darker parts of the photo, so I bring Blacks down to -61. I’ve set this by watching the edge of the image information in the Histogram move to the left as I drag the Blacks slider. When it reaches the left edge, I know that’s enough. Because I’m going to convert this photo to mono, I don’t go near Vibrance or Saturation – although I could use Saturation at -100 to create the black-and-white version.

3 Toned black-and-white

Up until recently, setting the Treatment was the quickest way to create a black-and-white photo. The V key will still create a black-and-white photo, but not in the same way. The conversion process is now done using Camera Profiles. The basic conversion changes the profile to Adobe Monochrome. There is a whole set in the B&W section of the Profile Browser [A]. Click on this at the top of the Basic panel and scroll down to see them.

Hover over the thumbnail to see a full preview in the main window. I’ve gone for B&W 08. I’ve also made it a ‘Favorite’ by clicking on the tiny star in the top-right corner of the thumbnail as I hover over it. This has made the image a little too dark, so I set Blacks to -23.

To tone the photo, I go to the Split Toning panel [B]. For mono toning, I usually only go for the Shadows section, as technically the highlights are set as paper white.

If I was emulating aged paper, I’d use Highlights as well – this is just for black-and-white images, though.

To echo the warmth of the scene, I’m going for warmer tones between 25-45 in Hue. A quick trick to test Hue is to hold the Alt key as you drag Hue. This temporarily emulates Saturation 100. I set my Hue to 42 and Saturation to a subtle 16.

For Grain, I go to the Effects panel. Setting Amount to 30, I also opt to change Size to 54 and Roughness to 29. This gives the image texture without being too intrusive.