Barn B&W is a free Lightroom preset that transforms colored images to vibrant black and white. To enhance its monochrome look, it also adds soft brown tones to the shadows. This adjustment ensures that you get rich and deep dark regions in your photos.
Collection: Black and White Presets
Best for: Portraits, Indoor and Outdoor
Style: Soft Brown Accents, Rich Tones
If you are looking for a classic retro look with vivid tones and details, Barn B&W is the preset to go for. This preset does, after all, make up for its lack of color using a broad range of tones; these significantly enhance the overall mood and drama.
You can use it on various types of photography, from portraits to landscapes, whether shot indoors or outdoors. What’s more, this is one of our versatile film filters that look great on both print and digital form, even on social media like Instagram.
Creates Rich and Brilliant Tones
Complex Tones. This preset sets itself apart from a lot of monochrome presets by producing complex tones. It applies subtle enhancements that come together to form a stunning and elegant look.
To do this, it first switches processing to black and white mode. This allows it to more finely add improvements. It then adds a soft brown tone to the shadows; this gives dark regions a subtle warm hue — not quite like sepia, only more complex grays.
The preset proceeds to refine its brightening by tweaking the temperature and tint sliders. Doing so makes skin tones look more illuminated, as you can see in the portrait above. For landscape scenes, greenery like plants, fields, and trees, would look more brilliant.
Produces Bold Tones by Increasing Contrast
Contrasting. The preset optimizes tone by increasing the recovery setting (Process: Version 2). This affects the light areas, as you can see in the After photo. In contrast, it also darkens black regions to enhance depth. Barn B&W moderates lighting further in the tone curve, too, to ensure that the result would not look artificial.
The preset also applies complementary improvements in lighting and midtones. It increases brightness and lowers clarity. These settings help define elements and blend tones more smoothly throughout the image.
Examine how the preset transforms the urban image above. See how bold its black and white look is, and how stunning the contrasts are. Notice, too, how the cars are all well-defined and textured.
Reconfigures the Mix Settings
Custom Brilliance. This monochrome preset looks professionally done not only because of its minute adjustments in tone but also of how it converts colors into grays. It adds more light to some than others; this creates depth and helps set the subject apart.
Barn B&W produces deep and dark grays for colors red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, and blue. Even these vary in brilliance and intensity. Note that these tweaks complement the initial overarching settings in tone.
Let us examine the example above. Compare the brilliance of the woman’s blue dress and the green leaves in the background. See how Barn B&W moderately lights up skin tones as well.
Enhances Textures
Crisp Details. With such polished tones, there is now a need to draw out detail. For this purpose, the preset sharpens textures and reduces some noise. The result can be seen above: look at the gritty rocks and the delicate waves. There is less grain now, as well.
As a finishing touch, the preset applies a little vignetting. This effect goes well with its intense high-contrast tones. Look how it also helps frames the entire scene.
Barn B&W is for Lightroom Mobile, Desktop and…
Like all our presets, you can absolutely use Barn B&W 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 Ana Silva
