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Chapter 20: How to color tone a monochrome DNG in Lightroom.
The Leica Q2 Monochrom journal.
The Leica Q2M produces a true monochrome DNG file. That means that the black-and-white sensor produces no color information, so the DNG file has no color profile. When you open the file in Lightroom the color tools not only don’t do anything but are grayed-out. So you can’t tone your monochrome DNG files in Lightroom.
But what you can do is create a final TIF or JPG of the image and edit that in Lightroom. Since they both have built-in provisions for color, you can tone these monochrome images with conventional control controls in Lightroom.
A lowly JPG? Well, since DNG is not really an image format, many of our DNG files wind up as JPGs eventually, whether posting on social media or printing. TIF works as well for toning, but a 48mp DNG comes out to be approximately a 280mp TIF as opposed to a 12mp JPG at 90% compression. Many printers can’t handle a file that large and many social media outlets will downsize the TIF and convert it to a lesser-resolution, highly-compressed JPG anyway.
Once working with a JPG of TIF, you will have all the advanced color controls at your fingertips. Coming from our days in the darkroom, Sepia and derivative tones are the most popular for monochrome adding warmth as well as a vintage look. However this image is from a white bronze tombstone, actually made of zinc and weathers to a light blue. The image below more closely resembles the true color.
Secret here: Both images came from moving the temp slider right or left. No advanced tweaking required.
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Photography Leica Q2 Monochrom