A bright black and white photo of a couple on a landscape

Sparkling


Sparkling is a free Lightroom preset that transforms colored images into a high-contrast black and white. It creates bright whites and highlights that stand out against deep and punchy dark tones. If you want a bold yet versatile monochrome film preset, this is the one to use.

Collection: Black and White Presets
Best for: Versatile, Indoor and Outdoor
Style: Bright Whites, Vivid, High Contrast

You can use it for any type of photography, from portraits to landscapes, whether shot indoors or outdoors. Its brightening adjustments make it applicable even to dim photos. This looks great for both digital and print use, too. Try it on your casual day-to-day uploads on Instagram if you want a filter that will give a classic look but with a modern twist.

Amplifies Contrasts and Midtones

A woman wearing a black coat and holding a black umbrella in the middle of a highway

Deep and Rich Tones. It is the deep darks that add a punch to this Sparkling preset. It intensifies them by boosting contrast and clarity significantly. You can easily see how it deals with blacks by looking at the woman’s portrait above. Her black coat and umbrella are now inky and close to true black. See, too, how these simple adjustments helped enhance her skin tones and illuminate her facial expressions.

Boosts Whites and Highlights

A bright black and white indoor portrait of a woman wearing a white shirt and holding a bottle of coke

Brilliant Monochrome. The preset stays true to its name by fully drawing out the light from whites and highlights. You can see how luminous or sparkling these do look in the resulting images. The woman’s portrait above, for example, demonstrates how radiant its whites can be: simply look at her shirt and the light area of her face. Her photo now looks as though a ray of sunshine was directed at her.

A monochrome photo of a laptop and a coffee cup at a cafe

Contrasting Accents. This example shows how these brilliant whites serve as accents in this preset. You can be stylistically deliberate about this; if your photo is mostly dark but with a single source of light, you can instantly use this preset to make it pop.

Let us refer to the image above as an example. The laptop screen in the Before photo looks muted but bright in the After black and white. This can be an easy comparison of how much this sparkling preset maximizes the intensity of highlights.

Deepens Natural Tones

A brilliant black and white photo of a couple outdoors

Rich Grays. The preset produces crisp grays on outdoor photos where there are a lot of green and aqua hues. It creates this look by lowering their corresponding luminance levels in the black and white mix channel. These serve as a backdrop against the more brilliant hues. In the After photo above, notice how Sparkling converts the green grass into dark shades of gray, and how this helps draw the focus to the couple.

Refines and Sharpens Textures

A woman in a blue dress climbing towards the entrance of a brick architecture

Crisp Details. The preset’s high-contrast tones tend to smoothen the details completely. Sparkling’s extreme tonal settings can, after all, easily mask textures. To compensate for this, the preset sharpens the image and draws out as much detail as possible. You can observe its effect on the archway of the above photo.

Sparkling Preset is for Lightroom Mobile, Desktop and…

Like all our presets, you can absolutely use Sparkling preset as is, right out of the box. With any preset, you might need to make adjustments to accommodate your specific camera, settings, lighting and subject matter.

  • Entirely Adjustable
  • Compatible with Lightroom 4, 5, 6 and CC
  • Performs with both PC, Mac, and Mobile
  • Applicable to both RAW and JPG images
  • 100% Free

Free Lightroom Preset by PresetLove.com

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