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Creating and Using Presets

Lesson 43 from: Lightroom® 4 Fundamentals

Laura Shoe

Creating and Using Presets

Lesson 43 from: Lightroom® 4 Fundamentals

Laura Shoe

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Lesson Info

43. Creating and Using Presets

Lessons

Class Trailer

Day 1

1

Pre-Show Banter

07:02
2

9:00 am - Introduction: Why Lightroom®?

13:23
3

The Lightroom Library Catalog

16:42
4

Staying Organized

15:00
5

Backing Up Your Library

11:12
6

Importing Your Photos

34:20
7

Preferences & Settings

28:57
8

Settings Q&A

10:49
9

Reorganizing Files and Folders

33:25
10

Using Views and Labels to Evaluate Photos

45:00
11

Filtering and Stacking Photos

13:37
12

Assigning and Managing Keywords

31:42
13

Keywording Q&A

12:43
14

The Metadata Panel

14:38
15

Searching for Photos

20:54
16

Creating a Collection

15:25

Day 2

17

Day 2 Pre-Show Banter

09:09
18

The Map Module: Assigning Locations

43:33
19

The Develop Module

11:37
20

Fixing Your Photos: Histograms and Cropping

22:02
21

Fixing Your Photos: Spot Removal Tool

33:25
22

11:30 am - Upgrading to Lightroom® 4

12:14
23

11:45 am - Basic Developing in Lightroom® 3 & 4

21:29
24

Basic Developing Part 2

19:43
25

Color Adjustments

23:36
26

Tone Curve Panel

18:59
27

Making Subtle Adjustments

13:22
28

Lens Corrections

10:54
29

Local Adjustments: Partial B&W

13:03
30

Local Adjustments: Portrait Touch Up

26:05
31

Additional Local Adjustments

09:55
32

Graduated Filter

24:24
33

Bonus: Day 3 Preview

01:19

Day 3

34

Day 3 Pre-Show Banter

12:44
35

Bonus: Recap of the Develop Module

08:44
36

Virtual Copies

08:58
37

B&W and Creative Effects

20:50
38

Noise Reduction

12:23
39

Sharpening

18:33
40

Sharpening for Portraits

08:46
41

Syncing Changes to Multiple Photos

17:53
42

Autosync

21:09
43

Creating and Using Presets

15:53
44

11:45 am - Lightroom® and Photoshop

22:49
45

Sharing Your Work

08:42
46

Exporting for Web

16:59
47

Exporting for Print

26:06
48

Workflow Recap

40:50
49

Thanks + Credits

07:02
50

3:00 pm - Lightroom® 4: Publishing

20:52
51

3:30 pm - Lightroom® 4: Video Editing

12:38
52

3:45 pm - Lightroom® 4: Book Module

19:36

Lesson Info

Creating and Using Presets

creating and using presets. So I'm gonna go G for grid and I'll go back to my develop examples folder. Really, for this example, it doesn't matter what photo you're using, so I'll go ahead and use this one de for Developed. And remember I said that it would be nice if I could save my vignette settings as a preset so that I could apply them toe other photos. So Presets Air just saved groups of settings. As I mentioned on Thursday. There, lots of light room can't presets here, but let's look at how to create our own presets. Let's go down to the effects panel and create that vignette or any vignette, but I'll just go ahead and I'll slide. Also the amount to the right and everything else the left here to give myself that white border, maybe feathering up to soften the edge of that border. So every time I want to apply this look to a photo. I don't want to have to come down to the effects panel and create these settings each time. So once I have the settings, I'm going Teoh, come to the to...

p of the presets panel, click on the plus to the right of presets. And I'll call this white, white, thin border and very similarly to what we saw with Sink Light Room is asking us of all of the settings or all of the things we could have done to that photo. And I did a lot to that photo, right? Which settings should be part of this preset? Which settings do you want to be able to copy over other photos. So I'm gonna go ahead and click on check none to clear things out, and then I'll think carefully about what should be part of this preset. So in the effects section here, I've got post crop vignette ing. So those air the settings that I want now this one, I know the questions. If I ignore this, questions will come up. And it's important to point this out that there is a process version setting in here. Okay? And it's got an exclamation point by saying you may want to think about whether you want to check this or not. Okay, if I check this, it's gonna automatically update old photos light from three photos to the new process version. Now you've seen from yesterday that when you update from light from three delight room for when you update your photos to the new process version, if you've worked on them, they can change significantly. So I would think about using this rather conservatively. In a situation like this, this is a vignette. It's a very simple preset. It doesn't involve any of the tonal controls that have changed in light Room three versus Light room for, and I want to be able to apply this vignette back to my light room three photos without having toe update them and and rework them. So I'm not going to include process version in this particular preset. I'll do another example where I will include it, but I don't want to automatically update my photos just to get a vignette on the photos. There's nothing different about post Crop and getting in light from four versus light Room three. So I'm gonna go ahead and click on Create and here in the presets panel now under user presets, I've got my white thin border. If I click on another photo and then I click on this white thin border preset, it's applied. So creating a preset is is really that easy. Okay, now some people, including myself. When I first I have to admit that I made this mistake myself, and I made it in front of an audience and I couldn't figure out why it didn't work. So it might be natural. Let's put it that way to assume that if I select multiple photos in the filmstrip and I click on a preset, that that preset is going to be applied to both. So I saw it applied to this first, but it's not applied to the second. Why is that, you guys, the Auto Sync needs to be on exactly so presets or just develop settings. So you saw that just because we had a set of photos selected in the filmstrip really in general were still only working on the one in the main preview window, and that if we want develop settings to be applied to all of the photos that are selected, we have to turn on auto sync here. So let's let's do that. Let's turn on Auto Sync and I'll go to these other two photos here whips. Okay, I've got those two photos selected. Now, if I hit white thin border. I'll see, in fact, that that it's been applied to both of those photos. So that was a panic. That was a panic moment a couple years ago, and I could figure that out. So But it makes sense once you understand it, of course. All right, let's take a look at creating another preset. I'm just looking for a a decent photo for it. We'll go ahead and let's continue. Now let's go to this photo here. I may change my mind here. Just give me one sec. But I think that what's that? Okay, the dog. Well, what we need to do with the dog is take out. Let's let's do the best we can to take out the tag, okay? It's not gonna be It's not gonna be precise, but just for fun, we're going to click on the spot removal tool and let's get a large a large circle here, and I'm gonna go ahead. See? It's okay if the circle goes below the photo and I'm gonna click, and I'm gonna take the source circle and see if I can take it from some other for here. Yeah, the edge along the ring is gonna be a little a little iffy, but maybe I can get away with it if I finessed this a little bit. Okay, What will pretend that I did a good job, Really? That would be That would be a Photoshopped task or much more precise. But now it's not bothering me so much, so I'm willing to work on the dog. So what we're gonna do is kind of give us a little bit of a vintage look, and this is gonna be just kind of a quick and dirty vintage. Look, it's not gonna be as well thought out is some of the presets that I know are out there, but sometimes with a vintage look, what you have is you have a more washed out look. So that means reducing contrast. The photos look a little bit yellowish. Um, so let's just let's just work on making this photo look kind of a little bit older and more washed out, so I'm gonna go ahead and reduce the contrast on this photo. This photo had so much contrast that I made and maybe overdone for other photos, But that will be a good good example anyway. So reduced the contrast. Maybe increase the shadows a little bit. Got to go further on this contrast, all right? And let's go down to the split toning panel, which actually I haven't mentioned. So we'll go down to the split Tony panel. So the split toning panel, I think of it in terms of black and whites if you want to make your black and white sepia toned or selenium toned, but we can use it on a color photo as well. So we're gonna add kind of a yellowish cast to this photo. So to do that, we're going to click on this little highlights color square, and we can choose any any color we want. There are some presets that the light room team has built in here, and then we can reduce the saturation here. Really, we don't need. We don't need very much, and then I'll click to close that window Now, Right now, that tone is affecting just the highlights, just the 50% brightest tones in the photo. But if I change this balance to say I wanted to affect everything, then it will affect the entire photo. So the idea with split toning is you might have one color in the highlights. Another color in the shadows. So balance would say which portion was considered highlights in which portion work was considered shadows. But in our case, we're just toning the entire thing. Yellow and I can fool around with a saturation out here is well, now as a so I'm working on this. I'm a little nervous that this preset is gonna look lousy, but follow my process and that might not my, uh, not this particular result. So I've worked on this photo and I want to save this look and apply it to other other photos and see how it looks. OK, so I am going to create a preset click on the plus to the right of presets and I call this my vintage attempt Click check known and I'm gonna go with the the the contrast adjustment and the oh, let's see, what was its put toning, split toning iss I know you guys. We're seeing it. Here it is. Okay. The contrast, adjustment and split toning. Now when you're working with tone controls light from three of lighter for are different Okay, so if you have presets that have tone controls in them, I think I think I was also lightning the shadows. I'm just going to say, in general for this preset, I'm gonna take the tonal controls. In general, If you're working with presets that you want to copy over the tone adjustments, you're gonna have to update the process version because they differ between light room three and light room for So if you want. You know, if you want them to work effectively, you have no choice but to update the process version. So we'll check that as well. We'll say create and let's just, uh, for kicks. Take TECO will take this photo here and we'll go to my vintage attempt. You know, it's not a bad starting point, but that's that's exactly how you would do that. Questions, examples of where you've made presets that have been really handy for you. Yeah, I made some vignette ones and a couple split toning ones. Two months, I figured how to make it work. And then the question I had was when you would click on multiple ones that can you stack different presets and even ones that have tones I would have. What prevails does the 2nd 1 prevail? And then is it a safe bet to do just a vignette one? And, you know, should you do that last, that kind of stuff. If you're gonna use presets, what order? And then what happens when you use multiple presets? Okay, so when you're creating presets, I would You know what it's asking you. Which settings do you want to include? I would include as few as possible because even let's go back to when I was creating the film border presets, presets. When I was doing that, I could have checked all and just said, you know, I didn't do any exposure work on that photo. I didn't do any contrast. Work. Um, So I'm just gonna If you include things other than what you intend they are gonna wipe out whatever you settings you had. So if my vintage, or if my border preset had included an exposure adjustment because I checked that box, um, then I would wipe out exposure on my subsequent photos. So let me just go ahead and show you that Let's create a second effects preset. So I have this photo gonna go into effects. I'm gonna go with a black border in this case, and then I'm gonna go up to the basic panel. I want you to see that I'm gonna reset. I'm gonna reset my exposure adjustment. So it's it's exactly it. Zero. Okay, maybe a little confusing what I'm gonna be doing. But let's just reset everything here and then I'm gonna create my preset. Not my preset is intended to be a film border preset Look on the front. Plus, I call this black border and this would be the flawed thinking, OK, The flawed thinking would be that Let me go and check. All the flawed thinking would be that because I haven't done any work on this photo except post crop vignette ing. It's okay to include other things. That's not the case. Okay, Yes, All of these settings out here are zero. I haven't done this work, but I would be hard coating thes settings of zero in, and I would be wiping out work on other photos, so I need to make sure I say check non and then consciously say just post crop and getting so sometimes when you get presets on the Web. You know, some some of them have been created very carefully, so they're very specific on what they apply to. But others have not been created so carefully, and they changed too much of your work. You know, maybe it's just a border preset, but because they had this checked when they created the preset, you know, they're wiping out your basic panel work, so be very specific. It's okay to keep. You can stop and all that stuff exactly. You're not wiping out. That's the thing is it's, you know, it's a preset is just like any other developed setting that you know what they stack on top of each other, whether they wipe it out, wipe out something underneath. Depends on what the decisions were in here.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Lightroom Day 1 Slides.pdf

bonus material with enrollment

Favorite-Lightroom-Shortcuts.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

Miguel Lecuyer
 

Great workshop! New to Lightroom and found it very helpful. Saved me a couple hundred dollars and time by not taking an evening LR class. Creative Live workshops match my learning style perfectly. Laura is awesome! My only complaint is maybe Laura can use a PC next time which is what she seems more comfortable using. Her shortcut mix-ups on a Mac were making me a bit dizzy :)

a Creativelive Student
 

I cannot express enough how impressed I was with Laura and this class. I learned more in the 3 days of this workshop than I did in all 6 weeks of a class I took online that cost three times as much. I left not only impressed by the class but MOST importantly - refreshed and energized to put my new knowledge to use! Thank you for that!!!

a Creativelive Student
 

Excellent workshop bar none. I learned more about Lightroom than I did from any other tutorial/workshp that I previously encountered. Thanks Laura!

Student Work

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