This set of black-and-white presets for Lightroom has been designed to incorporate many traditional looks and popular effects with an authentic film-like feel.

Note—For these to work correctly, you need to shoot RAW or in Color JPG. Don’t shoot JPG B&W, or they won’t work correctly. RAW works best.

7 Looks + 30 Variations

There are 7 base looks organized with different effects and treatments, giving 30 variations.

Looks 1a through 1g are a general mix of black and white styles.

Adjustments to the color channels and primary channels enhance and accent certain colors. Some brighten up skin tones, and in others, landscapes look better.

Each look has a standard and high contrast look marked with a +.

These simulate color filters that would go over the lens when shooting traditional black-and-white film.

Red filters work well when dealing with skin tones and people; however, I also use greens a lot on people. Yellow can also work well in most situations.

Black-and-white photos can give you a few different looks, which I’ve placed in an Effects category. I’ve also built some of the standard B&W looks to have these baked in.

Faded

This effect gives the B&W a faded look and feel that’s pretty classic.

 Muted

This look fades the image but also brings down the highlights. The color curve is set up to give it a very interesting, muted look. For years, this is how I treated my B&W photos.

 Grunge

The Grunge look blasts out the clarity. Many snap-focusing street shooters or manual lens shooters do this because it helps hide the fact that the focus is never 100% accurate. It often looks great when shooting at higher apertures.

These are shot with various cameras. They’re always shot using RAW, but you can also use JPG.

How To Install

Unzip file. Right-click in the preset panel in Lightroom. Click Import.

V1.00 will work on older versions of Lightroom that use lrtemplate files. If you are using an older version, email me, and I can send those to you.

 Changelog

1.25 – 09/28/21 – Consolidated some of the Red Filters by eliminating one of the looks, and made minor changes to the other looks in this set. A few looks did not properly set the channel mix, but those have been updated. I added ++ looks, which adds even more contrast. Turned down the grunge effect on the grunge look to make it a little more usable. Added new Grain effects.