Minimal Black Look in Lightroom [FREE PRESET]

In this Adobe Lightroom tutorial, we’ll be creating a clean, minimalistic black and white style with some warm accents. This look has exploded in popularity in the past year, and is heavily inspired by a selective color editing.

What I enjoy about this style we’ll be creating is that it works on both day and night images. It’s easily adapted to any type of photograph. Below are some example photos of what we’ll be making.

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Be sure to watch the video for the secret code to download the Minimal Black Preset.

So if you like to read, let’s jump right into this Lightroom Tutorial post! For starters, go ahead and tone your images how you normally would in the tone tab. Here’s a screenshot of my Tone tab. This will be a little different for each photo. You can check out the Before and After image is at the bottom of this post.

Pro Tip: Add a bit of Clarity [+20-40] for some contrast in your mid-tones. This will give your image a bit of punch and sharpness.

Next, we’re going to open up our HSL [Hue, Saturation, Luminance] tab. This is where we are going to create the soul of our minimal saturation look. In short, turn down all of your cool tones: Green, Aqua, Blue, Purple and Magenta. Magenta and Yellow are two of the sliders that I like to customize depending on how I want the final photo to look.

I prefer a softer warm accent instead of a harsh one, so I usually desaturate the warm tones a touch. When we add Clarity, we don’t want our colors to go overboard.

We’re almost done, just two quick steps. For some extra rich black tones, set your Profile to Adobe Vivid. If you want a softer feel, you can also try the Adobe Portrait profile.

Lastly, to fine tune exactly how much warmth and saturation you want in your photo, play with your Color Temperature Slider. A cooler temperature will result in less color, while a warmer temperature will add more warm tones to your shot.

So that’s it! You’ve created your very own Minimalistic Black photo in Lightroom. You can see the Before (Left) and After (Right) from my NYC Spidey shoot, below.

Make sure you watch the quick video above for the code to get your Free download of my Minimal Black Lightroom Preset.