Bleach Bypass preset for Lightroom & Sony Alpha
Bleach bypass comes from skipping the bleach step in film processing, leaving silver in the emulsion: contrast climbs, saturation collapses toward monochrome, and the whole frame takes on a metallic sheen. Harsh, gritty and unmistakably cinematic.
How to shoot and edit it
- Give it texture to chew on — concrete, rain, weathered skin, industrial scenes.
- Hard light works here. Soft light plus low saturation just reads as muddy.
- Keep a genuine black point in frame or the metallic look turns to grey mush.
The measured values
Decoded from the genuine Bleach Bypass profile. These are the slider equivalent — what it takes to reach this look without a colour profile. The .xmp you generate in the tool embeds the measured profile itself, so it needs far less on top.
Lightroom Classic
Light
Color
Presence
HSL / Color mixer
Tone curve
Color grading
Detail & effects
Grain
Sony Alpha — Creative Look
Adjustments
D-Range Optimizer
NT base with Saturation -7 captures the bleached silver look. DRO Off preserves the high-contrast S-curve character.
Sony Alpha — Picture Profile
Main Settings
Black Gamma
Knee
Color
Color Depth
Detail
CORRECTED: was Cine4 (a FLAT gamma) which fought the look — Bleach Bypass is HIGH contrast (LUT Contrast +30, Clarity +15), so Still gamma + crushed blacks (BL -5, narrow black gamma -4) + a hard early knee (88%, slope -1) build the gritty S-curve. Saturation -24 plus uniform -4 depth retains the silver-ghost of color (not fully mono). Detail +3 for the metallic edge.
Related looks
Acros is Fujifilm's black and white profile, named after the film stock: exceptionally fine grain, strong micro-contrast and clean gradation from deep blacks through to open highlights. It holds detail in the shadows better than most digital monochrome conversions.
The fashion-magazine grade: crushed shadows, cold highlights, restrained colour and enough contrast to sculpt rather than flatten. Skin is kept slightly cool and matte. Everything serves the shape of the light.
Dark, desaturated and contrasty: the look that dominates urban photography feeds. Shadows go deep and cool, colour is pulled back to near-neutral, and grain keeps it from feeling digitally clean. Light separation matters more than colour.
Make your own version of Bleach Bypass preset
Adjust the description, add a reference photo, or import a preset you already own — Preset Lab returns the Lightroom values and the in-camera settings together.
Open the generator