Edit a mono image by painting tones
Paint your contrast where you want it with non-destructive layering techniques in Photoshop
1 Edit your raw file
Choose a wildlife image you think is going to work well: something with excellent texture and good tonal contrast throughout. In your raw conversion software, turn the image black and white and do your basic editing. The most important thing at this stage is to ensure that no highlight details are overexposed, so if there is a gap on the far right of your histogram, that’s OK.
2 Darken the image
Take your image into Photoshop. Open Photoshop’s Layers Panel via Window > Layers, then click Create New Fill Or Adjustment Layer at the bottom and pick Curves from the list. Pull the curve down from the middle so that the whole image darkens. At this stage, we’re just interested in creating the darkest point of the image, which is the area above and behind the hare.
3 Paint with contrast
Select the Brush Tool and choose a very soft-edge brush. Start with Opacity set to 100% and paint over the area you want to be the brightest part of the image – in our case this is the hare’s face. Now work around the rest of the image, changing the opacity of the brush to suit and paint back in the Background layer to create the overall balance of tonal contrast that you like.