- Applying "Looks" Using Creative Profiles
- Virtual Copies- The "No Risk" Way to Experiment
- Using Presets for One-Click Looks
- Creating Your Own Presets
- Creating Presets That Automatically Adapt to Your Image's ISO
- Other Places to Apply Presets
- Changing Individual Colors
- How to Add Edge Darkening (Vignette) Effects
- The "Gritty City" Look
- Creating a Matte Look
- Making Great Duotones
- Creating Black- and-White Images
- Sun Flare Effect
- Painting Beams of Light
- Making Streets Look Wet
- Quick and Easy Spotlight Effect
- Adding a Light to the Background
- Getting the "Orange and Teal" Look
- Creating Panoramas
- Creating HDR Images
- Creating HDR Panos
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Using Presets for One-Click Looks
Lightroom comes with a decent-sized collection of pre-designed presets, which give you different looks and do different tasks for you. You click on a preset, and it moves all the sliders and settings it needs to create that look for you (it’s like having a friend that’s really, really good at Lightroom). Besides using the default presets that come built-in with Lightroom, you can find loads of Lightroom presets online (some free, and some not) that you can import and start using in your own work. Here’s how to use the ones that are there and how to import any that you download:
Where They Live:
They’re called “Develop presets,” so they’re found in the Presets panel (seen here) in the left side panels of the Develop module. They’re separated into groups (sets) to make it easier to find what you’re looking for (portrait presets, cinematic looks, futuristic looks, and so on), and then down at the bottom are more production-type presets for sharpening, lens corrections, etc. At the top of the panel are your User Presets (the ones that you create and save yourself—more on these on page 218—or those that you download and import).
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Seeing Previews/Applying a Preset:
You can see a preview of how any of these presets will look, even before you apply one, by simply hovering your cursor over it in the Presets panel. The effect appears both up in the Navigator panel, at the top of the left side panels, and on your image itself—as seen here, where I’m hovering over preset TR03 in the Travel group, which puts a greenish/blue tint on the image and boosts the contrast, among other things. Check out some of the other presets in this group while you’re there (I like TR10 a lot), but of course, these can look vastly different depending on the image you’re working with. To apply a preset, all you have to do is click on it. If you want to tweak things after the preset has been applied, you can just grab the sliders in the Basic panel and go to town!
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Hiding Presets You Don’t Need:
If you find yourself not using Adobe’s built-in presets, or if there are just groups of theirs (or anybody else’s for that matter) that you don’t use, you can hide them from view. It doesn’t delete them, so you can make them visible again at any time. Here’s how to hide them: In the right side of the Presets panel’s header, click on the + (plus sign) button and choose Manage Presets. That brings up the Manage Presets dialog (seen here) where you can turn off the checkboxes for any groups of presets you want to hide. Click Save when you’re done (and remember, they’re not deleted—just hidden). To make them visible again, come back to this same Manage Presets dialog and turn their checkboxes back on.
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Saving Favorites:
If you find that you apply certain presets often, you can save them to a Favorites group so they’re not only grouped together, but appear right at the top of the panel. To add a preset to your Favorites group, Right-click on the preset and choose Add to Favorites (as shown here). Now, when you go to the Presets panel, at the very top, you’ll see a new Favorites group and inside it will be just those presets you chose to add as favorites (as seen here, where I added that Travel TR03 preset to my Favorites).
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Importing Downloaded Presets:
Like I mentioned, you can find a ton of Lightroom presets online that you can download, import into Lightroom, and apply to your images. Once you’ve downloaded some, In the right side of the Presets panel’s header, click on the + (plus sign) button and choose Import Presets (as shown here). Now, just navigate to the preset, or folder of presets you downloaded on your compter, click Import, and you’ll now find them under your User Presets group (as seen here).
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