How to Create a Black & White Smart Collection in Adobe Lightroom - Black and White Challenge

3 Nov

Have you been nominated for the Black and White challenge? You know the one: someone posts a Black & White photograph to a Social Media site and then they nominate you to then post one black and white photograph each day for 5 days? You have? Excellent! Then this may help you out with that challenge.

Did you know you can actually setup a Smart Collection in Lightroom so you can view all of your Black and White photographs in one, neat collection? This will make finding all your best Black and White's far easier and participating in this great little challenge so much more fun.

If you're at home or in a place where you can watch a video, then check this out. If not just continue past the video for the instructions laid out with screen grabs:

(Be sure to share links to your 5 Black & White Photographs below!)

Open Lightroom and then open the Library module:

Click the 'Collections' view on the left hand side:

Click on the small + icon on the left hand side and choose 'Create Smart Collection' from the new menu that appears:

In the new window that appears give your new smart collection a name, such as 'Black and Whites' or 'Mono Only' etc...
- Optional: If you would like to include this inside a collection set, just check that box and choose your collection set. This is handy if you wanted to have sub-collections, for example Black and White's with a 1 star rating etc...
Next up set the parameters of the smart collection by clicking on 'Rating', then choosing: 'Develop' > 'Treatment' (as shown below):

Your Smart Collection then should look something like this:

Click 'Create' and you should now be looking at all of the Black and White's in your Lightroom Library. Presto:

So there you go - a Smart Collection showing just the mono photos in your library! Have a go.

Why not share a link to some of your very own Black and White photographs below in the comments.

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