Color is incredible for setting a mood, but sometimes it’s just a distraction. When you strip a street photograph down to its barest elements—light, shadow, geometry, and texture—you need a profile that doesn’t just desaturate the image, but actively sculpts it.

Meet the Obsidian B&W LUT.

This is not your standard, gentle monochrome conversion. Obsidian is an aggressive, high-contrast black-and-white profile engineered to mimic the legendary look of Kodak Tri-X 400 film pushed two stops in development, or the gritty, high-contrast aesthetic of the Ricoh GR series. It simplifies chaotic urban environments into bold, graphic shapes.

The Gritty Photojournalism Aesthetic

Built on the Lumix Standard profile, Obsidian completely transforms how your camera handles light and texture:

• Inky, Crushed Blacks: It earns its name here. Instead of trying to preserve every ounce of shadow detail, this LUT intentionally plunges the darkest parts of your image into pure, heavy black. It hides distracting elements in the alleys and backgrounds, forcing the viewer’s eye exactly where you want it.

• Punchy, Brilliant Highlights: Because the shadows are so deep, the highlights—like harsh sunlight hitting the pavement or a subject walking through a shaft of light—pop with incredible, three-dimensional intensity.

• Authentic, Coarse Grain: It ditches the smooth, clinical perfection of modern digital noise for a rough, textured grain structure that feels exactly like classic silver halide film.

Built for Harsh Contrast

Most profiles break a sweat in bad lighting. Obsidian was specifically designed to thrive in the harshest conditions the city can throw at you.

• Harsh Midday Sun: When the sun is directly overhead and casting brutal, hard shadows, Obsidian turns that high contrast into a geometric playground.

• Transit and Architecture: It uses the heavy framing of subway pillars, bus stops, and brutalist architecture to create stark, moody compositions.

• Low-Light and Night Photography: By intentionally crushing the shadows, you eliminate the muddy, mixed-color noise of streetlamps and neon, leaving behind a clean, moody nighttime aesthetic.

Dialing It In: The Exact Photo Style Settings

To get the true pushed-film look, you need to tell your camera to embrace the grit. The LUT handles the dramatic monochrome conversion, but adjusting your Lumix Photo Style settings gives it that final, aggressive bite.

Here are the recommended in-camera settings I use to get this look:

Profile: Standard (The LUT will handle the B&W conversion)

White Balance: AWB

iDynamic: Off (You do NOT want the camera trying to rescue your shadows here)

Contrast: +1 (Adds even more separation between light and dark)

Highlight: +1 (Makes those sun shafts pop)

Shadow: -1 (Helps plunge those dark areas into true black)

Saturation: 0

Hue: 0

Grain: Medium – High

Color Noise: Off

Noise Reduction: -2

Sharpness: 0

How to Use This LUT

You can load this profile directly into your camera to be used in your custom user profiles, drop it into the Lumix Lab app for quick edits on your phone, or apply it in your editing software of choice (like Adobe Lightroom or Premiere). Just make sure your base photos are shot using the Standard photo style with the tweaks listed above.

When you want to cut through the noise of the city and shoot with pure, graphic intent, load up Obsidian and hit the streets.