If you are new to using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, you may not be familiar with the use of presets. Once you have learned the basic organization and develop modules in Lightroom in my Lightroom Quick Start Class, you’re ready to move on to presets!
Presets are a collection of saved settings that you can readily recall and apply to any photograph in a Lightroom catalog. BPSOP is happy to offer this class on Lightroom presets to help you take your images from good to great!
You can either purchase presets or create your own. Once you have learned how images are edited in the develop module of Lightroom, you can create your own custom presets that reflect your own style.
Perhaps you like the way a landscape image looks, or a set of adjustments on a portrait. This is where you can save these presets to use on other images in the future. These presets are not necessarily a one touch image editing solution, but it’s a good place to start.
Each preset will not likely work as a final adjustment for every image. Think of it as a place to start your photo editing and you can tweak each image to your liking without going through all of the basic adjustments. You can then move into the fine tuning of your image right away.
They can serve as creative inspiration
Presets can help you enhance your Lightroom editing skills. When you apply your favorite preset, you can look at its settings, adjust them to your liking, and understand how they affect your photo. This will extend your understanding of Lightroom, enhance the way you go about editing, and achieve a more diverse range of styles for your images.
They are a very efficient and powerful way to boost your Lightroom editing abilities for results that would otherwise take ages to even imagine on our own. Even if you are a novice Lightroom editor, it is never too early to learn the power of Lightroom presets.
Presets can truly become your photographic inspiration. As you develop your own photographic style, your audience may expect a certain look from you. But maybe there are other times, when you need some simple creative inspiration. That’s where you can easily see many variations of the same photo and choose the one you like the best and continue to edit that picture to its final edition. See the samples below. All of these editing adjustments were done in one click, and can be undone just as easily.
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- Original Image
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- Creative Glow
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- Strong Contrast
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- Strong Tonal Contrast – BW
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- Cool Light – BW
Presets Can Speed Up Your Editing Process
Lightroom presets will help you avoid repetitive tasks that are applied to every image and allow you to put your creative time and talent to better use. If none of your presets work for a particular image, it’s much easier to apply a preset that is similar to your projected outcome than start from scratch, and then work on your image from there.
Focus Easier on Your Work Flow
If you decide to purchase presets from a developer, they will typically organize them by type and style. For example if you need presets for portraits, or for landscapes, it will be easy to find just the right preset for your project if you decide you don’t want to create your own.
There are also adjustment brush presets that will allow you to edit specific areas and features of your photos. No need to create a whole new preset for your portrait retouching. A set of of portrait brush presets will help you edit skin, eyes, lips and hair with ease.
Join us for our next class to learn the power of presets!
In this two week class, we will show you how to create your own presets to use over and over and create your own signature style. You will also learn to use third party presets to help with your creativity and enhance your editing power. You will receive detailed information on the website page each week, as well as tutorial videos to help you understand the course material.
Holly Higbee-Jansen is a passionate photographer and photo workshop leader, and has been exploring her fascination with light since she was a young child. As a co-owner and guide for www.JansenPhotoExpeditions.com, she loves taking small groups of clients to beautiful places to help them explore their photographic creativity. Join them on one of their photographic workshops in iconic locations in the American West and Iceland. Live life creatively!
Reach Holly by email at: [email protected] and read her blog at: JansenPhotoExpeditions.com/Blog
BPSOP Instructor – Holly Higbee-Jansen
Holly Teaches:
