The Canon Magazine 53
MOODY MONO WILDLIFE
STEP 3 EDIT THE RAW FILE
The ideal Raw image will have a dark
background and a strong light source hitting
your subject’s key features, predominantly
from the same angle to create harsh
shadows. Open your image into Photoshop
CC’s Adobe Camera Raw and click on the
Lens Corrections tab. Make sure Remove
Chromatic Aberration and Enable Profile
Corrections are checked.
Now head back to the Basic panel and
drag the Saturation slider all the way to -100,
turning the image monochrome. Now you
can boost the contrast by dragging
Highlights to -100 and pushing up Shadows
to +50. Then boost the Whites to around
+65 and set Blacks to -5, you can also
increase the Contrast slider a little. But note
that these values will vary from image-to-
image, but you’ll want the highlights on
your animal portrait to pop.
Next, increase the value of the Clarity
slider to make the details more well-defined.
Adjust the Exposure slider until your subject
is well exposed but the background is dark. It
can also be worth adjusting the Temperature
and Tint sliders, usually used to tweak the
White Balance, but can help you tune the
contrast when working with mono images.
STEP 4 FINAL ADJUSTMENTS
To sharpen the fine details – a crucial part of
black-and-white image editing – head over
to the Detail panel and set the Sharpening
Amount to 50, hold the Alt key and drag the
Masking slider to the right – only the white
parts of this preview will be sharpened, so
drag it to a value until only your subject is
shown in white to avoid sharpening any
out of focus areas or background noise.
Finally, grab the Radial Filter Tool from the
toolbox and drag this over the subject. Make
sure the effect is set to Outside, then drag
the Exposure and Highlight sliders to the
left until the background is nice and dark, but
the well-exposed animal stands out clearly.
When you’re finished editing the Raw file, hit
Open Image to bring it into Photoshop CC.