Photo Editing Realities Part II: It's All About The Presets Baby

Remember when you were told not to bring up politics or religion in conversations with strangers? Well…I think you can add photo presets to that list as well now. It’s become a bizarre controversial topic on social media and people are certainly quick to judge. We live in a time where people are super concerned with what other people are doing - I think it’s some kind of defense mechanism on some level but this isn’t a human behavior blog. Anyways….

I use Lightroom Classic for my raw photo editing and Lightroom Mobile for my Jpegs and iPhone photos so I will be discussing presets using Lightroom (LR) here today.  I am sure other programs have something similar. I also use Photoshop actions so I will touch on those as well. 

There are so many ways to edit a photo in LR and so many different functions and sliders!  Presets are basically a shortcut (or recipes as we call them) that you can either make yourself or purchase online that automatically change each function - the presets can control specific colors, color grading, tone curves, saturation, shadows, highlights, contrast, sharpness, noise levels, and much more. It’s a good way to get uniformity in your photos and I often make presets from other presets! I have hundreds of them.

I am going to discuss purchased presets on the blog today.  I have plenty of my own homemade presets because I typically edit all of my own indoor studio photos myself. I use purchased presets on almost all of my outdoor photos. I’m generally working with so many more colors and color grading in my outdoor photos.

I feel like I don't know the full potential of some of my photos until I run some presets on them to see how they look. I could edit them all without a preset but it's hard to turn back and change directions once you are really far down a road in editing. Presets make that way easier. I know some people use the same exact style on every photo they take, and that's great for them, but I am not one of those people.  I think each photo tells a story of some kind and the style helps to tell that story.  

The old school photographers get super cranky over you and me purchasing presets.  They think of presets as “cheating”, copying someone else’s work or being too lazy to learn how to edit. I am calling total BS on all of this. That’s just silly - that is like saying using Quickbooks is cheating because you should do all of your business accounting by hand.  You do you - but I personally love making my life easier and more creative. 

There are also the people that say that purchased presets never “work” on their photos and that they are a waste of money.  I find that if I have a good photo to start with (good lighting being the key here) that I can make just about any preset work for any photo. It is always going to come down to good photography first. “You can’t put lipstick on a pig…” and trust me - I do have plenty of terrible photos that no preset can save. 

I use presets in a couple of different ways:

I have my one click Lightroom Mobile presets that I use for Jpegs when traveling, posting on social media, or even photos taken on my iPhone. I almost exclusively use Lou & Marks Presets.  They offer thousands of them - in every style you can possibly imagine - and they are just so incredibly easy to use.  I get them for around $8 a pack and they still have additional sales on bundles so you really can’t beat that! They also work in Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Mobile, which is super important to me because I upload a lot of photos to social media before I have the time to sit down and edit on my laptop. A lot of the more expensive presets don't work in Lightroom Mobile so no iPhone or iPad editing, which is no good for me. I love editing photos but I am also a very busy mom.  

When I am sitting down to dive deeper into editing a photo on my laptop - it takes a whole lot more than just one click.  I start by fixing my white balance and exposure in every photo first and then I click through many different presets to figure out which creative style I am going to use for a particular session. Once I pick the style - I tweak and tweak and then tweak some more to make the preset work perfectly for my own photos. I will create dozens of masks on each photo and I even use some of the AI features (this also spurs an audible gasp from the cranky old photographers). This is the fun part of editing!! 

Once I’m done with my tweaking in Lightroom Classic - I will take the photo over to photoshop to finish it off. I use Greater than Gatsby Portrait Retouch Actions, which I absolutely love. There are many others out there but I love what GTB offers and the ease of use..I also love the book The Great Gatsby (total nerd) so I was sold on these pretty much immediately. Photoshop is another animal entirely and you really have to know how to use it before diving in with these actions.

So, my personal caveat with using any presets is that I do think it’s helpful to know how to use Lightroom. I can click on a preset and know immediately if I need to change specific color sliders a bit or remove the added grain for example. I know that I don’t want certain colors altered - school colors are a good example! If you don’t know how to tweak the presets - I do think you might end up disappointed with your purchase.  I also very rarely use a preset at 100% - generally I start at 80% and drop it from there if needed. 

I have 3 quick photo examples below.  The first photo of each set is the original photo with corrected white balance/exposure.  The second is using a preset by Lou & Marks - literally just one click and (besides slobber all over the little dude's face) totally useable just like this. The third photo of each set is the final version (although these are still really quick edits and I would do a bit more work for a client).

I just picked 3 recent 'for fun' photos that I have taken recently to use as examples and to show how any of the presets can and will work on any photo. I own 16 Lou & Marks preset packs - each pack contains 10-15 presets. I used Vintage Summer Dark on the first photo with the basketball. I used Vibes 5 on the second photo with the little guy and I used Creamy Boho Vibrant on the dog photo. All photos were finished in Photoshop with Greater than Gatsby Portrait Retouch Actions. 

I don't believe that presets are a lazy tool or a "cheating" tool at all. They offer me some much needed inspiration on photos and I am able to take it from there. And aren’t we all inspired by something or someone? Or shouldn’t we be?  I am more than happy to support small businesses and other photographers that are way more creative than I am! 

I have links to Lou & Marks presets and Greater than Gatsby PS actions within the text and again at the bottom of the blog page. Lou & Marks is almost always having a sale and sometimes they offer some freebies to try out.  GTB has a few free photoshop actions and overlays to try before you buy as well. There are more photo examples below as well.

Enjoy!