RAW WAR86 DIGITAL CAMERA
2
Tonality
While adding grit and grain is my final step,
I know that what I do there will alter what I do
in this step, so I may have to come back to these. My first
step here is to push Contrast: +44 looks good here. The
shadows have become blocked up a bit, so I open up
Shadows to +57. This brings back some detail.
Did you know that one side effect of using negative
Saturation for B&W is that the White Balance slider can
change your tones? Well, it can – so I change Temperature
up to 6385 to
bring some air
to the photo.
There’s plenty
of information in
the photo now,
but we’re about
to make it more
weather-beaten.1
Black-and-white conversion
The most basic
method of
mono conversion is to
change the Treatment at
the top of the Basic Panel
to Black & White. Pressing
V will achieve the same
end. Both change the
Profile from the default
Adobe Color (or Adobe
Standard on older imported
photos) to Adobe Monochrome. The
other Profile-based method is to
open the Profile Browser and choose
a dedicated B&W Profile that you
like. Me? I’m just going to grab the
Saturation slider and bring it to -100.
To fix the verticals, I go to the
Transform panel and click Auto. For
the sky, I go to the Graduated Filter
(M). I drag this down over the sky. I
bring Highlights down to -100 and
Exposure down to taste: -0.22 here.
To prevent the Empire State Building
being dragged down too much, I set
Range Mask to Luminance and set
the lower point to 95, so it only
affects the brightest tones.L
ooking at this file evokes thoughts of a movie
poster – a gritty, character-driven movie, with
plenty of action. And being a movie poster,
the photo needs to a little stylised – so, to
match my feel for the image, I think a
black-and-white conversion would look great.
There are many ways to do black and white in Lightroom,
but I think we’ll keep it simple on this one. I want to bring the
sky back a bit as well: full white at the top would definitely
draw the viewer’s eye away from the scene. I do want to
retain detail in the shadows, despite also wanting a good
deal of contrast. It’s going to be a balancing act to get this.
As I shoot a tonne of residential work commercially, I’m
fixated with good verticals, so I’ll definitely correct these.
Finally, I’ll use some of the Presence controls to add a
touch of grit to the photo, and top it off with Grain
from the Effects panel to seal the film look.Warrior 2
Sean
xƬ!ȒȸȅƏƬǸ
Fix
verticals
Darken
sky
Dehaze,
Clarity,
Grain
Ligh ten
sha dows
Ligh ten
sha dows
Con vert to
B&W
SEAN’S PLAN FOR THE RAW IMAGE