Step By step soft silver tones

Create a monochrome image that packs some punch with our simple walkthrough

01 Go Grey

Import TYLR01.DNG. In the Basic panel’s Develop module, click on the Black & White tab to desaturate the photo. Lightroom adjusts the position of the Black & White mix sliders. You can fine-tune the results. Drag Orange up to +33 to lighten the skin tones.

02 a question of Contrast

After lightening greyscale tones that correspond to orange colours, the histogram has slid to the right. However, you still need to boost the contrast. If you move the cursor over the middle of the graph you’ll see that the Exposure slider influences this section.

03 Increase the exposure

Click on the middle of the histogram and drag right to push exposure to +0.76 (or drag the Exposure slider right). Increase the strength of the tones by pushing the Contrast slider to +28. The higher-contrast photo has more impact and a healthier-looking histogram.

04 Lighten the shadows

Click on the histogram’s Shadow Clipping Warning icon. Areas that will print as pure black will appear as blue patches. There’s no clipping, but some shadows lack detail. Push the Shadows slider up to +50. Reveal more detail by dragging the Blacks slider to +37.

05 Boost the Contrast

To reveal the form of our fine-art nude, we can push the contrast even further. The Tone Curve tab enables you to selectively lighten or darken tones in a variety of ways (see right), but for now simply click on the Point Curve drop-down menu and choose Strong Contrast.

06 fine-tune the Greys

This contrast boost reintroduces some background clipping, but there are no important details here. Go back to the B&W tab to fine-tune the conversion. Push Reds up to +40. Return to the Basic panel and go to the Presence section. Drag the Clarity slider up to +51.