Black and white toning in Lightroom
How to add subtle shades of colour to your monochrome photographs
Why, in a digital colour world, are we fascinated with black and white photos? Obviously it was there when photography started, but even though we capture in colour, there’s something about the lack of it that makes a lot of photos more interesting. Reducing a photograph to tone and form removes any distracting colours and helps focus on the subject.
You can still add colour to black and white photos – not the cheesy spot colour of early digital, but simple monochrome. Traditionally film prints were toned because it added to their longevity. Fading of old prints is a real issue, so this saved them.
There are loads of common toning options, from the blue of cyanotypes to the brown-purple of selenium toning – there’s even gold and platinum toning. But here we’re going to look at the most basic one of all, the humble sepia toning. While this can run from reddish brown to rich brown, we’ll be taking a subtle approach here. The Color Grading tool’s Global panel could be used for this, but we feel that it’s heavy handed. We’ll still look at it, though.
1 Choose your method
There are many ways to create a black and white conversion in Lightroom Classic. You could set Saturation to -100, change Treatment to Black and White, or press V to change to a Monochrome profile. Or you can manually select a Monochrome profile in the Basic panel. Pick any method!
2 Boost contrast
Everyone has their view on this, but you’ll probably find that increasing the contrast really helps pop the photo. You could use the Tone Curve to create a precise contrast curve, but usually the Contrast slider is enough for this. Even a setting like 35 really helps.
3Color Grading
The main tool for changing the overall image colour in Lightroom is Color Grading. Open the panel and click on the last icon in the Adjust section. This is Global. Open the bottom left triangle and set Hue to 30 and Saturation to 24.
4 Adjust shadows
Global can be too strong in the highlights, so hold Alt/Option and click Reset Global. Click the second Adjust icon instead. Again with Shadows, set Hue to 30 and Saturation to 24. Notice that the effect just on the shadows gives a rich tone. Effectively you’re leaving the look of paper white in the toning.