LR Presets?

Chris E

Senior Member
I just upgraded LR 6 from 5, and will begin trying to PP all of my sorted photos to build my website. It has taken awhile (my goal was to have it built by now), but life gets in the way :).

Up to now, I have always just tweaked in LR as I saw fit on each photo. Do presets really help? I am thinking there will be alot of tweaking even if you use presets due to variability between photographs, so what is the point?

Just looking for opinions/guidance, and experience. Also, any thoughts on good presets, either free or for sale. Thanks in advance.

Chris
 

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
Presets are a good starting point for different effects. Use them to make a big change, then tweak the preset to your tastes and then save the tweaked preset as Your own...
 
I have a basic preset that was handed down to me from some major pros. I adds the basic sharpening, lens profile and a few other odds and ends I personally tend to do to almost all photos. It does all this on import and really speeds up all my post processing, You can tweak your import settings to do whatever you want but it really helps to have the basics set to auto import
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
I just upgraded LR 6 from 5, and will begin trying to PP all of my sorted photos to build my website. It has taken awhile (my goal was to have it built by now), but life gets in the way :).

Up to now, I have always just tweaked in LR as I saw fit on each photo. Do presets really help? I am thinking there will be alot of tweaking even if you use presets due to variability between photographs, so what is the point?

Just looking for opinions/guidance, and experience. Also, any thoughts on good presets, either free or for sale. Thanks in advance.

Chris
Presets are just another tool, in my opinion and I think what really matters is what you expect from them.

Often a Photoshop Action, or Camera Raw preset, will automate corrections or artistic enhancements I would be doing manually anyway, but I don't expect them to finish the job. Sometimes a combination of presets, or actions, will give me a finished product, but that's rare; 99% of the time I wind up doing manual corrections or artistic enhancements before I'm satisfied with the final product.

So to me, they're tools... Not perfect solutions.
 
Presets are just another tool, in my opinion and I think what really matters is what you expect from them.

Often a Photoshop Action, or Camera Raw preset, will automate corrections or artistic enhancements I would be doing manually anyway, but I don't expect them to finish the job. Sometimes a combination of presets, or actions, will give me a finished product, but that's rare; 99% of the time I wind up doing manual corrections or artistic enhancements before I'm satisfied with the final product.

So to me, they're tools... Not perfect solutions.


the one I use just does the basics and is just a starting point for processing. Less for me to deal with most of the time.
 

nikonpup

Senior Member
kiss - i click "auto" and work from there with basic sliders. I do not want to spend the time looking for a "preset". I do use lr's antique light for some photos.
 

RockyNH_RIP

Senior Member
I use about 3 presets that have been modified from others over time. I have one that I tag for all scenery shots (also use for stills etc...), 1 for People and one for High Noise.

Sometimes I will use scenic for people etc if I like the effect. Then from there I fine tune each shot...

I do like Don's idea about import preset and may try that for sharpness... (Thanks Don)

Pat
 

singlerosa_RIP

Senior Member
You might already know this, but if you edit a photo, you can apply those edits to other photos by selecting the edited photo and other photos that you want to have the edit applied to and clicking the sync settings button at the lower right of the screen in Library Mode.
 
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