Black and White Processing in Adobe Lightroom and NIK Silver Efex

I get numerous inquiries about my digital black and white techniques. Here are a few examples, step by step as processed in Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop and NIK Silver Efex. All these images were shot in Death Valley with a Nikon D2X and various lenses. All files 16 bit Adobe Pro Photo RGB. You can see that quite a few steps are involved.

Each of the photos were fairly drab before processing.

The first image in each of the three selections is a Nikon NEF RAW file unprocessed.

This photo was shot near sunset at Ubehebe Crater.

I first processed the image in Lightroom with what I thought looked good in color, ignoring black and white. 

1. Auto Tone to see what it looks like.

2. Lens profile and or correct chromatic aberrations.

3. White balance as shot (Daylight)

4. +40 Claity

5. +36 Vibrance

6. +20 Saturation

7. Add graduated filter to lower rock area and brighten slightly.

8. Add graduated filter to sky and darken slightly.

9. +15 Fill light

10. Export to Photoshop CS5 

11. Auto Tone and contrast to see what it look like.

12. Select the trail area with lasso tool and feather 10 pixels.

13. Brighten the trail slightly using levels.

14. Save and export to NIK Silver Efex.

15. Use the High Structure Filter and add the yellow filter to darken the blue sky.

15. Save back into Lightroom

16. Use the gradation tool to slightly darken the cloud n the right side.

The second photo was also photographed at Ubehebe Crater. You can see by the unprocessed original how flat and un interesting the light was.

First processed in Abobe Lightroom.

1. Auto Tone to see what it looks like.

2. Lens profile and or correct chromatic aberrations.

3. White balance as shot.

4. +35 Black Clipping

5. +40 Clarity

6. +42 Vibrance

7. +10 Brightness

8. +49 Sharpening

9.  -Color Temp to 5300K

10. Slight Crop

11. Add gradation filter to top area and darken slightly.

12. Export to NIK Color Efex

13. Use the Black and White Conversion Tool and add green filter and brightness.

14. Export back to Lightroom 

The third photo was also processed in Adobe Lightroom, but by using it's own greyscale tools rather than exporting to NIK or Photoshop.

1. Auto Tone

2. Auto White balance

3. Convert to Greyscale

4. Color temp to 4900. (even in greyscale this can impact the tones)

5. +40 Clarity

6. +1.67 Exposure

7. +35 Black clipping

8. Tone Curve -19 Darks, +13 Lights

9. Point Curve, Strong Contrast

10. +46 Shapening

11. Auto Grey Scale Mix

12. +50 Brightness

13. +50 Contrast

14. Add Brush Stroke and Darken area above sand dune.

15. Slight crop.

16. Add Gradation to the left side of dune and darken slightly.