Making Negatives in Lightroom Classic – Step by Step

Step-by-step guide to making negatives in Lightroom. When printing alternative photographic processes, the image is typically created either as a photogram (using physical objects) or from a negative (a film) derived from a digital photograph – perhaps taken with your phone. There are many software options available for producing a negative. Kai Tormod Hansen demonstrates how to create both positive and negative digital films using Lightroom Classic for use in contact-based printing methods.

Writer and photography / Kai Tormod Hansen

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Lightroom Classic provides a straightforward way to develop a negative or positive film while keeping the original image untouched. This guide walks through cropping, black-and-white conversion, contrast adjustments, masking, dust removal, flipping the image for printing, and selecting the right output settings. It is an accessible approach for both beginners and more experienced artists seeking consistency in their prints.

This guide explains a simple method to prepare a digital film for anthotypes using Lightroom Classic. Adobe offers the most comprehensive suite of software tools for digital creation and is used by the majority of photographers. The subscription price reflects this, but a temporary trial license is available. Students are also offered reduced pricing. For photography, the most relevant Adobe tools are Photoshop, Lightroom Classic, and Lightroom. Each can be used to create positive and negative films for alternative processes such as anthotypes, cyanotypes, and Vandyke prints.

Lightroom Classic has a different workflow from Photoshop, with stronger support for managing large image collections and a simpler approach to editing, exporting, and printing. It is typically faster to work in Lightroom than in Photoshop, although it does not support layers. Photoshop and other specialised photo tools can be integrated into Lightroom, making it an effective framework for working across multiple applications. If you are a total beginner in Lightroom and want to learn more, several Lightroom guides are available, such as this one. 

Lightroom is a non-destructive editing tool, meaning that any changes you make do not affect the original photo file. Instead, Lightroom saves your edits as instructions. You can always go back, remove changes, or create different versions of the same image without losing the original.

To get an idea of how the image will look in monochrome (for example, black and white, as for palladium prints, or blue and white for cyanotype), turn it into black and white. 

Moving a slider left darkens areas that originally contained that colour, while moving it right brightens those areas. For example, brown objects darken when the yellow or orange sliders move left, while blue objects remain bright.

Perhaps you are happy with MOST of the image, but need to adjust an area of it a little more than the rest? In that case, use a mask to target only one part of the image.

To create a negative film (unless you need a positive for processes such as anthotypes), invert tones using the Tone Curve by reversing the diagonal line so that black becomes white and white becomes black.

Before printing, flip the image horizontally. Go to Photo > Flip Horizontal so that the emulsion side of the transparency will face the coated paper during exposure.

To print a positive film, select Print and choose a template such as (1) 4×6. Set the correct Cell Size for height and width to match your printing paper. Open Print Settings and choose glossy or photo paper quality, and the highest resolution available.

Good luck!

Kai Tormod Hansen has a background in physics and electrical engineering and is based in Oslo, Norway. He works mostly on nature studies in a variety of photographic processes. www.kaitormod.com, Instagram: @kaitormodhansen.