Building A Black And White Look - In Post #532

My approach to photo editing is to nail the basics and get my photo about 80% of the way complete within the first couple of minutes. Then, I may spend an hour or two on the final 20%, shaping and crafting each are of the scene to tell the strongest story I can. The look for this black and white photo didn’t take hours, yet it was a combination of a few key adjustments partnered with a series of smaller nips and tucks.

Here is a list of the main adjustments made to this photo:

Set the fundamentals of exposure, black point, white point, and white balance (leveraging the Auto buttons)
Switch to a black & white camera profile
Downplay brightness in the foreground
Adjust the black and white mix to darken the blues and yellows in the photo
Accentuate the main subject - the tree - with detail and contrast
Darken and add drama to the sky
Refine tone and texture in the foreground
Refine overall contrast for the scene and address some halos

Watch the video for the complete rundown. I am also planning to post a video about dealing with halos in landscape photography - that is a topic worthy of a specific video.