Let’s get right into it. As the owner of a Leica Monochrom, you will know that there is no color information available with the .dng files from the camera. Since the color filter array has been removed from the sensor, there will be no way to manipulate the different “colors” of grayscale like when you convert a color photo by setting the Treatment to Black and White in Lightroom.

Because of this, if you’re looking to add the effects of a color filter, such as a red, green, orange, or yellow filter, in post-processing, then I’m afraid you’re out of luck. If you want that kind of look, then you’ll need to use a physical filter when you take the picture with your camera.

*I’ll assume you know how to import photos into Lightroom and are familiar with all of its tools, as this tutorial does not touch on the basics of the software. Also, these edits are done on a Mac.

So, you’ve imported your photo, and now what? Let’s take a look at a photo I took recently in Napa. I used a 35mm Leica Summicron lens at f/11. I almost always have the exposure compensation set to -0.3 or -0.7 to make sure that I do not blow out the highlights (the one big danger of the Leica Monochrom).

As you can see, the photo above is pretty dark, but that is by design. Leica Monochrom’s have an insane ability to recover detail in the shadows. Look at the same picture with the shadows tool pushed to 100% and the exposure opened up a full stop:

The detail that had previously been smothered in darkness now looks as if I exposed for it when I took the shot. You’ll notice, however, how I lost a lot of the foreboding aspect of the clouds. And this brings us to the most important point of the day: try not to use global adjustments if you can help it. Making local adjustments will enhance your picture and bring out more creativity than a sweeping global edit.

After reverting the photo back to its original settings, the first thing I want to do is take advantage of those wonderful clouds. I want to make them as menacing and ominous as possible. To do that, I’m going to use the Graduated Filter. If you start the filter close the horizon as you see in the picture, then it will cover the entire sky.

To filter out the tree branch and ground at the horizon, select Range Mask: Luminance from the Gradient Filter dropdown, then hold the Option key and slide the left point of the Range to the right until the trees and ground at the horizon turn blackish. To finesse the filter, still holding the Option key, move the Smoothness slider to the left until the trees and ground turn black (like in the photo). It’s usually between 25-35 that produces the best results. Now only the sky is selected as indicated by the red mask overlay (above).

Subtlety is the key here. The picture is already pretty dark but I want to make the shadows of the clouds darker and the whites a bit brighter. I achieved this by pushing up the Exposure a bit and dropping the Highlights down as well. Then I made the Shadows darker, the Whites brighter and dropped the Blacks down just a bit. I prefer use these sliders for contrast rather than the Contrast slider itself because I want more control. With that, I close the Graduated Filter.

For the next step, I open the Graduated Filter again (or you can simple double-click on the Effect title to start a new one). I’ve created a preset named B+W Enhance which I use as the base for editing my photos. It’s just a base and I can adjust the sliders as I see fit depending on the look I’m going for. But for this picture, I left the settings alone. It’s just a subtle effect with a slight increase in Exposure, Texture, and Clarity. I then I bring down the Dehaze a tad. I want to bring up the exposure on the bottom of the picture before I start on my next edits.

As you can see on the image below, the changes I made were not major ones. I have the clouds looking nice and ominous and the foreground shadows were brought up just a bit.

Next up is the Adjustment Brush. I’ll keep it on the B+W Enhance preset and run a medium sized brush over the path, the grapevines and the patches of ground in the shadows in the foreground. I like the bushes how they are so I won’t touch those.

Then I close the Adjustment Brush and open it again and run it over the light part of the path and the grapevines, but not the ground in the shadows. I repeat this process one more time and now the picture looks like this:

I’m liking how that’s looking but I want to bring up the exposure in the trees on the horizon a bit. So I open the Adjustment Brush again, reduce the size of the brush and run the B+W Enhance–plus I increased the Shadows a bit–over the trees along the horizon one time.

That’s looking pretty good but I think I want to run B+W Enhance over the grapevines and lighted path one more time to bring up the exposure a bit more and increase the contrast with the foreground.

There, that’s looking pretty good. Now I want to give it a vignette, but I don’t use the Lightroom Vignette tool. Instead, I use a trick I picked up from Mark Denney. I reduce the magnification of the canvas to around 6% and then select the Radial Filter. I have a preset called Vignette that I use. The reason I like this technique is because it brings a very subtle change (tell me if you’ve heard that before?) instead of the more harsher (IMHO) default Vignette tool. I can also have more control over the area I want to be darker by manipulating the Radial Filter.

And that’s the final image. I’m pretty happy with how the foreboding clouds sort of dominate the scene as well as how the dark foreground of the tree and bushes contrast with the grapevines.

Let me know what you think in the comments below!