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How to Make a Photo B&Due west Except One Color in Lightroom

by Alexandra Bateman on Sep 15, 2022

Do you want to learn how to make a photograph black and white except one colour in Adobe Lightroom? Selective coloring in photograph editing can give your image a fun and playful experience, or make information technology more sophisticated and striking.

In this tutorial, we'll show yous how to employ Lightroom to brand your epitome black and white except for one color.

First, you'll need to make sure you lot have Lightroom downloaded and installed on your device. When buy Lightroom through Adobe's Creative Deject Plan for $9.99/month, you also get Photoshop!

Adobe at present offers 2 versions of Lightroom — Lightroom Archetype and Lightroom. Lightroom is a lighter version of Lightroom Classic, and so I'll be using Lightroom Archetype in this tutorial.

Making a Photograph Black and White Except One Color

First, you'll need to import your image to Lightroom Classic. You can do that past opening Lightroom and selecting Import.

Man in jeans and a red t-shirt standing in the center of a parking garage with cars on either side of him.

If you'd like to edit your image for sharpness, exposure, or clarity, you can exercise that now. Once yous're satisfied with the general look of your photo, we tin move on to selective color editing.

When yous're washed, access Lightroom's Develop mode, located at the menu bar on the elevation of the application.

Screenshot of Adobe Lightroom's Develop panel, emphasized with a red box around the word

I've decided to turn this image black and white except for the model's cherry shirt. In society to accomplish this effect, I'll go to HSL style nether Lightroom's editing sidebar, and select Saturation.

Screenshot of editing sidebar in Lightroom Develop panel. HSL/Color option is highlighted with red box.

HSL/Color panel of Lightroom's Develop module is extended to reveal options. Saturation is emphasized with a red box and saturation options are available.

And then, I'll decrease the saturation of every color except red to -100. This will plough all other colors grayscale, which will produce a black and white effect.

Your Saturation menu will now await like this:

Saturation of all color options except red are reduced to -100. Red remains at a neutral 0.

My image is now almost entirely black and white except for the subject area's shirt:

Original image appears black and white, except for red tones in the man's shirt, face, and in the taillights of some cars in the background.

Adjacent, I'll increase the photo'due south saturation of red so that the colour looks more vibrant. This isn't an exact science. Merely play with the saturation of your remaining colour until you're happy with information technology. For this paradigm, I settled on a ruddy saturation of +35.

Now the scarlet shirt of my model conspicuously pops against the desaturated background:

Red saturation has been increased and appears more vibrant in the initial image.

Yous'll notice that some ruddy remains in the groundwork of the photograph and in the model'southward face up. We tin remove this unwanted red coloration with Lightroom's Aligning Brush, located just under the Histogram.

Lightroom's Adjustment Brush, located under the Histogram in the editing sidebar is highlighted with a red box.

Click on the Aligning Brush and set its saturation to -100. Then, apply the brush paint over portions of the prototype that have retained an unwanted hue.

The saturation option under the Adjustment Brush is highlighted with a red box and decreased to -100.

One time I painted over those trouble areas with the Adjustment Brush, my finished photo looked similar this:

Red tones in the initial image in the car taillights and the model's face have been erased. The entire picture, except for the man's shirt, is now black and white.

Review of Steps for Selective Coloring in Lightroom

Once yous get the hang of it, editing photos for selective colors in Lightroom is pretty simple. Hither'south an overview of the steps it takes to turn an image blackness and white except one colour in Lightroom:

Import your photo to Lightroom
Enter Lightroom'due south Develop mode
Click on HSL/Colour on the right-hand editing panel
Select Saturation
Subtract the saturation of all colors to -100 except for the color you want to retain
Use the Adjustment Brush with a saturation of -100 to touch on upwardly trouble areas

You're Finished!

Try this editing technique on your photos and see what kinds of striking edits y'all can achieve!

We promise this tutorial has helped you learn how to make an image blackness and white except one colour in Lightroom. Bank check out this tutorial to learn how to accomplish the same technique in Adobe's Photoshop, or these popular tutorials on our blog:

If you learned something in this tutorial and are excited to effort out this technique, let us know how it goes! Follow u.s. on Twitter and Facebook for more photography editing tutorials, photography tips, and WordPress plug-in info.