Processing Mirrorless Images in Black And White

From the Best of Mark Toal

I’ve had many questions about how I process my black and white images. I wrote a blog post about how to set your Micro Four-thirds camera to black and white for our sister blog, Saving the World, One Pixel at a Time but today I want to share how I process the images.

You can either start with a color or black and white JPEG file or a color RAW file. I prefer to set my camera to black and white (monochrome) so that I can see something close to the final result on the LCD screen or electronic viewfinder. I use Adobe Lightroom for importing and cataloging my images. If you’re serious about photography and don’t use Lightroom I would highly recommend it. Keep in mind that I don’t like to spend much time processing my photos. If you search online you’ll find other great ways to do this. Choose what feels best for you.

1. Import your images into Lightroom and choose the file that you want to work on.
2. For 90% of my images I adjust exposure, bring the highlights down a little, bring shadows up a little, add or subtract a small amount of clarity and then set sharpening to 50. For this image I reduced the clarity adjustment to soften the image.
3. If you want a warmer tone, move the temperature slider slightly to the yellow side of the scale.
4. I like to adjust the post-crop vignetting to slightly darken the edges and bring attention to the subject.
5. As a final touch I do any cropping or straightening needed and I’m done. You can see the exact adjustments I made in the before and after photos.

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