WHATS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRESETS AND PROFILES IN LIGHTROOM?

Part of using Lightroom is taking advantage of the auto features. Some of these features come with the program, others you can set up yourself or purchase from a third party. 

In my Lightroom class, we cover in detail how to set up your own presets. Presets have been around since Lightroom was invented. You can use presets for any kind of process that you use on a regular basis. Some of my favorite presets I use for the adjustment brushes (graduated, circular and selective brushes). These include an exposure adjustment, a “sunshine” warming filter, and a texture brush. When you are editing a lot of landscape photography images, adding warm light can be an important element in these pictures. Presets will only modify the sliders in the develop module, nothing else. They are good for getting the creative juices flowing. You can hover over a preset, and it will show on your image how it will change the look of it. Don’t forget, these settings can always be adjusted, a preset is just a starting point to inspire creativity.

In April of 2018, Adobe expanded the usefulness of profiles and made them more easy to access. They were originally hidden at the bottom of the Develop module. Now the profiles are located at the top of the Basic panel in the Develop module. Keep in mind that you need to be working with a RAW file for the majority of the profiles to show up in this panel. These are only available if you are using the current versions of Lightroom CC, Lightroom Classic CC or Photoshop CC 2018 or newer.

Profiles are like presets but are permanently installed in the Lightroom program. To access profiles, open the basic panel in the Develop module and use the drop-down menu to select your option. You can also click on the icon to open the profile browser. You can select a profile that will be applied to the overall look of a photo. Unlike presets, you can apply these over any develop/edit controls you have already used. Profiles can create looks that are not possible with the Lightroom controls on their own. It would be as if you added a custom film effect to your images.  

Try using different profiles on an image that has already been edited in the basic panel and save your favorites in the “snapshot” portion of the left side of the develop module for that particular image. Then you can go through all of the different profiles, and save the ones you like, and cull through the images later. 

Lightroom is great for its overall editing and organization features, but when you dive a little deeper, you can find some amazing tools to enhance your images.

Holly Higbee-Jansen is photographer, trainer, blogger, and workshop leader who enjoys teaching and the creative process. Her passions include teaching photography workshops in beautiful locations in California, Iceland, Costa Rica and the American West with her husband Mark. Holly also teaches online classes on Lightroom, Photoshop, and photographic technique. Get Holly’s Free E-Book on “Landscape Photography and the Light“ and find out about her newest workshops at Jansen Photo Expeditions.com.

Reach Holly by email at hhjphoto@gmail.com and read her blog at JansenPhotoExpeditions.com/Blog

Holly Teaches:

iPhone Photography

In this class, we will introduce you to the magic of iPhone photography using several shooting and editing apps that will give you the ability to make your pictures sing in a fun and easy way. You will learn how to crop, change saturation, brightness and affect the overall look of your pictures with HDR, drama and grunge filters and other techniques. You will be amazed at the simple and effective methods.

Lightroom Quickstart

Do you want to learn to create images that show the beauty of the scene you saw when you took the photograph? Do you want to learn the other essential side of digital photography, photo editing and get up to speed quickly?

This course is designed to get you up and running FAST in this incredibly powerful program. In this two week information packed class, you will learn how to import, organize and perform simple and effective editing processes that will let you produce beautiful adjustments to your pictures.

For a complete list of Holly’s current workshops go to:

Jansen Photo Expeditions – JansenPhotoExpeditions.com

Holly’s Portfolio: www.HollyJansenPhotography.com

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/Jansenphotoexpeditions

Instagram – http://instagram.com/photographyexplorations

W. Eugene Smith is probably one of if not my favorite photographer. Since the beginning of my career as an advertising, corporate, and editorial photographer, I shot mostly black and white. His images made a profound impact on the way I was starting to see, and I identified with just about all of them.

Bur recently, I discovered a side of him that I really felt made us kindred spirits; and it was all about the ways I approach teaching.

I teach an online class with the BPSOP, and I also conduct my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops all over the planet. I teach my fellow photographers how to incorporate the elements of visual design into their images, so when I read what Gene Smith said, I immediately saw so many parallels to the way I do things.

He said, “If I can get them to think, get them to feel, get them to see, then I’ve done about all I can as a teacher.”

Get them to think: One of the most common threads between photographers is that they’re in a rush to click the shutter. Sometimes that’s necessary, as in street shooting when a ‘moment’ occurs and you have to be fast to get it. Most of the time it’s not that important. What happens is that you wind up having to spend time in front of a computer to fix what you didn’t see when you ‘rushed to judgment’.

Think about what you’re doing when you’re trying to convey a message to the viewer. It can be any subject, i.e., landscapes, portraits, still lifes, etc. If the viewer doesn’t know what you’re trying to say/show, he won’t spend much time working to figure it out.

Get them to feel: Well it’s all about the difference between taking and making pictures. It’s about the total immersion into your new found passion and craft. It’s about mastering the light and understanding exposure. It’s about getting some dirt on your shirt or at least your knees. It’s about taking on the challenge of being a good photographer, not a good computer artist or digital technician. Let me explain further:

Determining the light and the direction it’s coming from before you raise your cameras up to their eye to me is the most important factor. Making your own decisions as to the correct exposure to use instead of letting the camera and Lightroom do the work for you, scouting ahead of time and pre-visualizing your ideas in your mind then executing it, and spending more time than the “I came, I shot, I left”  frame of mind I find happening all the time.

The “I’ll fix it later” mentally that has come along with the digital era, has sucked the life and breath out of the right side of our brain; the creative side.  Why should I bracket when I can do it in Lightroom? Why should I worry about the horizon line being straight when I can just use my straightening tool later in front of my computer? It just goes on and on.

Get them to see: Is it just a tree? I talk a lot about right and left brain thinking. The left brain is the analytical side while the right side is the creative side.

For example, if you were to look at a fence around a little league baseball infield, the left side would see a fence around a little league baseball infield. If you were to look at that same fence with the right side of your brain, you would see Pattern, Shape, and Line; three of the basic elements of visual design.

Make sure that when you’re out shooting don’t view things as they are and what you first see, look past those initial reactions to things so you can see what else they represent. It will open so many other photo possibilities.

-BPSOP Instructor: Joe Baraban

Joe Teaches:

Stretching Your Frame of Mind I 

Stretching Your Frame of Mind II

Photos, the app that comes with every Mac has come a long way from its iPhoto beginnings. While not as flexible as Aperture (which has been discontinued), it’s an easier to use and learn application that has plenty of powerful features for your organizing and editing tasks.

While the Edit tools in Photos can accomplish much of what you might want to do with your images, Photos makes it easy to access even more powerful features via the Extensions option.
There are a couple of ways to edit your images in applications other than Photos. The most obvious would be right clicking on the photo or selecting Edit > Edit With. This will send your image to the selected application, but may not show the updates when you’re done. In my experience, Photoshop is about the only application that reliably works with Edit With.
A much better approach is to use the Extensions option in Photos.

When you select an image in Photos and choose Edit, you’ll see a … icon in the toolbar

Click on this icon and you’ll see any compatible extensions that are available to you

Not seeing anything? The App Store link will take you directly to many of the options available. In my case, I have both Pixelmator and Affinity Photo installed as replacements for Adobe Photoshop. I also use RAW Power as a more powerful raw editing tool.

Selecting one of the options here will open your image in that extension. In the example below, I’ve selected RAW Power to make adjustments to my image. When you do your edits with an extension, you’ll be taken into that application with all the features normally available if the app was launched and the image opened directly. However, the title bar of the app will be different – you’ll see Photos along with the name of the app you opened. More importantly, you’ll see Cancel and Save Changes buttons. Click on Save Changes and your adjustments will be applied and your image returned to Photos.

Choosing this method also means that you can back out of changes made later by choosing the Revert to Original option in Edit mode.

While Photos is an easy to use application, it’s a surprisingly powerful application that can be made even more useful through Extensions. And by using Extensions, you can avoid the headache of keeping your library updated, and having multiple copies of your images clogging up space. You’ll find Extensions available for HDR, black and white conversion, compositing images, creating text, and just about anything else you might want to do.

-BPSOP Instructor: Jon Canfield

Jon Teaches:

Mastering Apple Photos