Giving Images a 'hard' look

I made a tutorial a few years ago on the subject : https://youtu.be/yCUYw8KcF5w

Excuse my french…

Best

D.

Rather than go for that gritty B&W look, I think a partially desaturated look would be more effective.  For the second time today, I suggest doing it all with the Camera RAW filter, but make the layer a Smart Object before you start the edit, as I think there is likely to be some fine tuning needed.

The contrast, and 'grittyness' was done mostly with negative Clarity, and desaturation with Vibrance.  The negative clarity was going to blow highlights, but we got that under control with the Highlights and Whites sliders.  I was happy to let the blacks block out.   

You could go further with a strong vignette and grain.

Crank up the contrast and then oversharpen. That's how all movie posters are made.

Please post a couple of images you want to edit thusly. 

Apart from a black and white conversion, what else do you suspect has been done in post that wasn't naturally achieved in the original shoot?

I do portraits and have been asking to photograph bartenders in a local 'dive' bar so I am looking to do some 'hard' style images.

any presets I can get for doing images like this person is doing [link removed]