Image Rescue

A landscape with mono potential

Overcast lighting when this shot was taken has resulted in a rather flat raw file, and the colour hues blend together too much. There are lots of options for creating black-and-white images, but to keep things simple I am going to do a mono conversion from the raw file in Lightroom Classic.

The first task is simply to press V on the keyboard to turn the colour file into mono. Now I can go to the Black & White sliders in the B&W panel and simply play with the sliders to see how each channel affects the look of the photo. In this case, darkening the green channel helps.

Now I need to lighten the water in the ditch to create more contrast; an Adjustment Brush painted over it and the Exposure slider lightened does the trick. In the Curves panel I can boost overall contrast with a shallow S-curve before selecting the Radial Filter and making a selection over the sky, inverting it and darkening the clouds using Shadows.

After

1 2 Before 3 4 1 Flat colours lighting blends means together, the so there’s little definition. 2 The water channel needs lightening to make it more distinct. 3 The overall contrast needs attention to help bring out texture and detail. 4 The clouds...