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The Black and White Digital Darkroom

by Paul Gallagher

It is without doubt that black and white photography has a strong place in the world of image making today and I suspect this will always be the case. If we consider the photography magazine market, which is a very competitive environment, there remain several titles throughout the world that are entirely dedicated to the celebration of black and white photography. When we take a look at social media, or conduct a web search on the subject, we are inundated with societies, forums and groups who are in constant conversation about a subject that was 'apparently' superseded in the early seventies. Lastly, the giants in the photographic industry have not left black and white behind at all; virtually all cameras and capture devices have some form of monochrome setting to enable the photographer to peer into the wonderful world of black and white, allowing them to see what they had seen in full colour only moments before, represented in a series of tones of grey. Almost all image manipulation software dedicated to the post-capture segment of the photography market has attributed time and money in ensuring that photographers have access to exploring their photographs without colour. Many printers also have dedicated monochrome drivers sometimes using different combinations of their ink set.

Converting to Black and White One of the most important parts of the black and white photography process is converting your image to black and white using your computer. There are many ways in which to do this but I will cover the basic methods here so that we keep things as straightforward as possible. In Adobe Lightroom the first port of call is in the Develop Module and if you then look down this menu you will see the dialogue box HSL/Color/ B&W. If you then click on the B&W you will see your image turn black and white and you will see a list of different colour sliders available to you. These sliders relate to the colour in the original colour Raw file and it is here that you can explore various colours rendered in tones of grey (See image right).

If you are using Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) when you first open your camera Raw file it will automatically open in ACR. When you have done this you will see a menu bar positioned below the histogram in the upper right-hand side of your screen. As with Lightroom, if you then click on HSL/Greyscale, and then click on the 'Convert to Greyscale' box you will see that your image will turn black and white. Once again you will have the same set of colour sliders as in Lightroom (See image left).

If you decide to convert to black and white using Photoshop, the best way with the most flexibility is by creating a black and a white conversion layer which will present you with the same set of colour sliders in a dialogue box (See image right). I must say at this point that you are just beginning to 'shape' your image into a finished black and white photograph and you should not try to achieve every tonal adjustment at this stage. Also, if you 'push' and 'pull' some of the colour sliders too much you will run the risk of making your image look 'crunchy' by driving colours into clipping.

Contrast and Tones
Even after more than 30 years of making black and white photographs, I have only had a handful of images that have not needed localised adjustments. In the darkroom days we called this 'dodging' and 'burning' which meant we lightened and darkened separate parts of the photograph to bring out the light and tones that we saw when we were out there with our camera. We must remember that a digital camera can only do so much for us and it is up to us to bring out the drama or three-dimensionality of the photograph in the final stages. You can make this process as complicated as you like but what I will set out here are a few basic ideas to follow. If we begin with Lightroom, after we have made our conversion to black and white you will still be in the 'Develop' module using the adjustment brush. When you click on the brush icon a palette will open (See image left).

By adjusting the size feather of your adjustment brush you can explore how the individual sliders alter the smaller areas of tones in your image as opposed to being confined to global image adjustments. If you are using Photoshop to adjust areas of your image then I think it is best to keep things as simple as possible rather than making things unnecessarily complicated. The method I have used for many years involves using simple selections and curves. I find the easiest way to make a selection of an image is with the Lasso tool (See Image right).

As with Lightroom we can set the size and feather of our lasso and make individual selections of various parts of our image. When you have made your selection you then choose a new Curves Adjustment Layer in the Layers palette (See image left).

The Curves dialogue box now appears and consists of two axes which gradually transform from solid black to solid white and a diagonal line (See image right). One end of the line represents white and the other represents black. If we click on any part of that line and drag it up or down we will begin to alter the tones in our image. For example, if we push the line upwards we will lighten the chosen selected area and if we pull the line downwards we will darken the area we have selected. If we make an 'S' shape we will increase contrast and if we make a reverse 'S' shape we will lower contrast in the rocks of this example. With these simple controls we can do all that we ever did in the darkroom and we have an amazing amount of flexibility to explore all the tones in our black and white photographs. All that remains is to try this technique out as often as you can whilst altering the feather of the section according to the portion of the image you are intending to alter. If this process is followed you can, with a little practice, have a finished image whereby the tonal adjustments you have made, are not obvious, but the image has come to life during the process.

Advanced Settings
Monochrome specialists have always toned their prints to create subtle colour undertones to their prints. The Advanced print dialogue panel contains a colour wheel and alongside this are input boxes for 'Horizontal' and 'Vertical' values. These shift the base tone of the image. The ABW driver eliminates full cyan and full magenta inks from the printing mix but allows the use of yellow, light magenta and light cyan so that subtle tones can be created. This tool is subtle to use; a shift of 10 points Horizontal or Vertical creates a just detectable change in print tone so use at least five points when adjusting. Mike McNamee has created a ring-around image of the settings using values of 20 and 50 points around the colour wheel as a guide.

Making the print
After many years of darkroom printing, the closest thing I have ever come to in terms of a black and white darkroom print is using the Epson UltraChrome K3 inset and the Epson Advanced Black and White Driver. After you have resized your image and sharpened for output then you can access the driver by clicking on File>Print. This will bring up a Photoshop Print Settings box. From here you must set the Colour Handling to 'Printer Manages Colours'. At the same time you will see that the Printer Profile options are greyed-out. The reason for this is we do not want to use a full colour profile, we are opting to use the Epson Advanced Black and White Driver (See Image right).

When you have done this click on Print Settings and from the Print dialogue box change Colour to Advanced Black and White Photo (See image left). If you now click on Advanced Colour Settings next to Basic you will see the Advanced Black and White Driver menu for the first time.

From here I would suggest that you begin with the Dark or Darker setting in Tone Options and leave all the other controls alone. The thing to do here is not to begin to try to fine tune your image using the small thumbnail of the girl as all of your tonal adjustments should have been completed before you have reached this stage. I recommend that you begin with your favourite paper media for your monochrome work and use a piece of A4 in the printer to make a print. If the resulting print is a little too dark or too bright, just alter the Tone setting accordingly (each increment in the Tone setting shifts the mid-grey tone by 4%). From my experience, within a few sheets of paper you will have a beautifully neutral black and white print.

The other settings, Brightness down to Highlight Point Shift are best left alone; your corrections should ideally have been carried out ahead of printing. However, if you are troubled with 'bald' patches on your highlights the Highlight Point Shift will add a small amount of ink, known as a 'scum dot' in the trade. This has the effect of dulling the print slightly but if the print is to be placed under a window mount the viewer will be unaware of it - you take your money and make your choice!

Conclusions

The masters of black and white photography managed to produce some of the world's most famous photographs in traditional darkrooms using only pieces of card and cupping their hands. As I said at the outset, you can make this process as complicated as you like but from all of my years of experience, I see little need and you can make exhibition-quality black and white prints and enjoy doing it at the same time. In short, practice makes perfect!



Updated 27/04/2026 16:44:22 Last Modified: Monday, 27 April 2026