Lightroom Presets

[dougp]

What presets does everyone use? I'm curious, as I've primarily used "Trey's Lightroom Preset's" from Stuck in Customs but I'd like to find some good portrait presets.

 

[gevorg]

I just use the built-in ones and a few of my own. Not a fan of HDR-like presets from Trey, they make photos look too artificial/fake. On a rare occasion when I want to get a instagram looking photo, I'll just play with the Tone Curve, Split Toning and HSL controls.

 

[foghorn67]

VSCO, an amazing time saver. I had my own that were similar, but it required too much tweaking for any situation.

 

[The Stigenator]

never heard of trey's but i'll have to check them out. At 40 bucks for both volumes its not that bad.

 

[glen]

Why would one need presets in lightroom?

 

[Kaido]

Why would one need presets in lightroom?

Instant color grading. Basically you can slap a look on a photo with zero effort. My wife does weddings from time to time and it makes it a million times easier to grade thousands of pictures, then you can focus more time & energy in Photoshop on the ones they're going to print & frame.

 

[Kaido]

VSCO, an amazing time saver. I had my own that were similar, but it required too much tweaking for any situation.

Agreed, VSCO has amazing presets. I love how film looks and VSCO just nails it for going digital.

 

[Kaido]

What presets does everyone use? I'm curious, as I've primarily used "Trey's Lightroom Preset's" from Stuck in Customs but I'd like to find some good portrait presets.

My wife has a zillion of them (she does photography on the side), plus a folder of her own customized presets. Sometimes it's easier to use an existing preset and then tweak it to your liking and save that as well. I don't have a list of everything she uses, but here are a few off the top of my head:

http://vsco.co/store

http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/lightroom-presets/

http://www.lightroompresets.com/

http://reallyniceimages.com/

There's also huge lists of free ones floating around the net:

http://www.pinterest.com/chandg00/free-lightroom-presets/

http://photo.tutsplus.com/articles/...e-lightroom-presets-and-how-to-make-your-own/

 

[CuriousMike]

Damn, VSCO cost as much as the software.

 

[crash331]

I've got some called Totally Rad. I've heard Trey's are good.

 

[iGas]

It is odd that one would buy generic presets for LR & PS to limit your work to look like everyone else.

 

[Syborg1211]

Lots of people use Instagram... what's the point of paying for a pricey piece of software if you're not going to learn how to make the adjustments yourself? Instagram does this for you for free

 

[iGas]

Lots of people use Instagram... what's the point of paying for a pricey piece of software if you're not going to learn how to make the adjustments yourself? Instagram does this for you for free

I haven't follow the social media trend for the last 15-20 years, and to me Instagram look like "cross processing" technique of yester years after Googled Instagram images. Instagram looked like high saturation and colour & contrast shift of "cross process" (C41 print film processing in E6 slide chemical, and E6 slide in C41 print film chemical). It is an over used old technique that can easily be done with LR/PS, and there are free Photoshop plugins for the lazy/uneducated photographers to use.

I wonder what it is like if the ignoramus mass run across reticulation with cross processing, or Cyanotype with positive contact printing.

 

[CuriousMike]

*snip* there are free Photoshop plugins for the lazy/ignorance photographers to use.

Or, for normal, average people who want an easy way to play around with their photographs without investing a lot of time.

 

[iGas]

Or, for normal, average people who want an easy way to play around with their photographs without investing a lot of time.

A quick Google search resulted in free cross process plugins for Gimp, and LR as well.

 

[foghorn67]

A quick Google search resulted in free cross process plugins for Gimp, and LR as well.

Quoted the wrong dude.

 

[dougp]

Lots of people use Instagram... what's the point of paying for a pricey piece of software if you're not going to learn how to make the adjustments yourself? Instagram does this for you for free

Well shit, you have the controls on a camera - what's the point of paying for a pricey piece of hardware if you're not going to learn how to use it yourself?

 

[jhansman]

what's the point of paying for a pricey piece of software if you're not going to learn how to make the adjustments yourself?

This. Presets can save time if you are processing batches of images, say, for a client. I still prefer to adjust myself; I learn more that way.

 

[Kaido]

I don't think it's an either-or thing. There are times when you want to tweak an image individually and there are times when you want to use a preset. And sometimes both - you apply a preset and then tweak it up a bit from there.

 

[AViking]

I'm a bit surprised that Nik software is not mentioned here. Anyone have good experience with it?

 

[sochee]

Don't your "presets" decide what all your images look like, therefore giving them a unique style that should be personal to you? Maybe this is what you meant, but just wanted to experiment with the presets of others and play around with them. But otherwise, I'd never the presets of someone else, I think that defeats the purpose. You develop your own over time as you grow familiar with Lightroom and your personal aesthetic.