The Perfect High Contrast B&W Preset (in my opinion)
If you shoot Leica, you already know the HC Black & White picture profile. It’s how I always use my M11 - the high contrast black white helps emphasise light, shadow, highlights, shapes, form and ultimately improve my compositions on the move.
Looking at the regular coloured picture profiles doesn’t do much for me whilst shooting. They’re almost boring in a way that makes no difference to how I see.
But there’s something very satisfying and helpful about the crunchy pop of contrast from the b&w profile. But here’s my issue… I am always shooting RAW, probably like you.
That beautiful high contrast preview disappears the moment you open Lightroom and start developing, and you're left staring at a full colour file. Most of the time that's fine I end up with final colour photographs around 70% of the time.
But for the other 30%, when the shoe fits, you know it needs to be black and white and I want that previous Leica b&w look. But it's gone.
So I built this preset.
This preset is my attempt to recreate the Leica HC B&W profile as faithfully as possible inside Lightroom - and then push it just a little further with added texture and a touch more contrast, making it my new favourite B&W look i’ve seen from a preset… obviously i’m biased.
How I Made It:
This wasn't just a case of desaturating a file and tweaking the tone curve. To get this right, I shot against a colour card and painstakingly matched how the Leica HC B&W profile converts each colour into grey. The shade of grey that red becomes. The shade that green becomes. Skin tones. Sky. Foliage. Each one needed to be precise, so that when you drop this preset onto a colour RAW file, the tonal relationships match, as closely as possible what the Leica profile would have produced in-camera.
Combined with the Adobe Monochrome profile in Lightroom, the result is consistent and reliable across a range of camera files - not just Leica. I've tested it across multiple systems and it looks great to me.
This is the B&W preset I've been using personally for months. It's dialled.
What You Get:
XMP file for Lightroom desktop
DNG file for Lightroom mobile
The Perfect High Contrast B&W Preset (in my opinion)
If you shoot Leica, you already know the HC Black & White picture profile. It’s how I always use my M11 - the high contrast black white helps emphasise light, shadow, highlights, shapes, form and ultimately improve my compositions on the move.
Looking at the regular coloured picture profiles doesn’t do much for me whilst shooting. They’re almost boring in a way that makes no difference to how I see.
But there’s something very satisfying and helpful about the crunchy pop of contrast from the b&w profile. But here’s my issue… I am always shooting RAW, probably like you.
That beautiful high contrast preview disappears the moment you open Lightroom and start developing, and you're left staring at a full colour file. Most of the time that's fine I end up with final colour photographs around 70% of the time.
But for the other 30%, when the shoe fits, you know it needs to be black and white and I want that previous Leica b&w look. But it's gone.
So I built this preset.
This preset is my attempt to recreate the Leica HC B&W profile as faithfully as possible inside Lightroom - and then push it just a little further with added texture and a touch more contrast, making it my new favourite B&W look i’ve seen from a preset… obviously i’m biased.
How I Made It:
This wasn't just a case of desaturating a file and tweaking the tone curve. To get this right, I shot against a colour card and painstakingly matched how the Leica HC B&W profile converts each colour into grey. The shade of grey that red becomes. The shade that green becomes. Skin tones. Sky. Foliage. Each one needed to be precise, so that when you drop this preset onto a colour RAW file, the tonal relationships match, as closely as possible what the Leica profile would have produced in-camera.
Combined with the Adobe Monochrome profile in Lightroom, the result is consistent and reliable across a range of camera files - not just Leica. I've tested it across multiple systems and it looks great to me.
This is the B&W preset I've been using personally for months. It's dialled.
What You Get:
XMP file for Lightroom desktop
DNG file for Lightroom mobile
