Black and white Lightroom presets

Desaturating a colour photograph does not produce a black and white photograph. Pulling saturation to zero throws away the one thing a mono print is built from, which is the decision about which colour becomes which grey. A red jumper and a green hedge can meter identically and collapse into the same flat tone, and the picture loses the separation it was composed around.

Every pack in this group makes that mapping on purpose, with a print or press tradition standing behind the choice. Darkroom by Barytaprint is the widest of them, 144 presets across eight rooms of process: Silver Halide and the Plate Room, Press Black for reproduction, Contact Print at proof size, Grain Report where the texture is the record, and the toned finishes in Platinum Print, Selenium Tone and Copper Wash.

The others take one tradition each. Infrared Look + Red Filter by Infrawhite is 36 across two filtrations that both go after the sky. The red filter darkens blue and holds cloud structure; the infrared look pushes further, sending foliage toward white and the sky close to black. Orthochromatic by Orthosilver is 18 presets in the old emulsion's blindness to red, unkind to skin in a way portrait photographers once had no choice about and some now want back. Graphic Black by Pitchblock is 18 aimed at poster: few tones left standing, hard borders between them.

Sepia Archive by Umberpaper is 18 warm-toned looks for photographs that are meant to read as records. Issue 01 by Inklooks is 15 built for a page, where the greys have to survive ink and paper rather than a backlit screen.

Take the library when you are working through a body of pictures and want the processes to sit together on a wall. Take one of the single packs when a frame has already told you what it wants to be.