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How Presets Work?

Lesson 2 from: The Power of Lightroom Presets

Matt Kloskowski

How Presets Work?

Lesson 2 from: The Power of Lightroom Presets

Matt Kloskowski

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Lesson Info

2. How Presets Work?

Next Lesson: Portrait Presets

Lesson Info

How Presets Work?

So the idea behind the precept is we go over here to our develop module hit, reset. On this one, we go and we do something to a photo. So on idea would be, you know, let's let's take landscaping outdoors. What? Something that we're always doing Our landscaping outdoors were always where was pulling back. The highlights were always opening shadows. Those That's a pretty common move for for landscapes. So pull back shadows open up, highlights. Maybe I had some contrast to it. And then I come up here and I converted to black and white. And then I go down, Um, you know, split toning. Maybe I go over to the hue on the shadows and at a little bit of color and then go down here to effects and throw a hefty vignette on it. Something along those lines so pretty high contrast you lots of clarity. Lots of contrast. Pretty high contrast, black and white type. Look, maybe we even pulled down the exposure a little bit, so we do something like that to a photo that, to me, is a perfect candidate for a...

preset. Just turn it into a preset. You go over here. I know. I'm gonna close the navigator for now just to get some more room. You go over here to the right hand side and hit that little plus fun. Give it a name, so I'll call it high contrast black and white. And then you tell light room what you want to save inside of that preset. So what we could have done, we could have done a number of different things here. In fact, let's do just that. It's, uh we got exposure. Contrast, highlight shadows. And maybe maybe I'll do some lens corrections on it as well. Um, And then some sharpening those same sharpening on. So I saved this as a preset. If there's things I don't want on it, you just don't check. So I usually hit check? None. So what do you want? And so I want exposure. Basically, you know, anything I did in the basic toning section I'll take I want clarity. But Scharping, maybe my sharpening is going to be different based on every photo I do. So you know, in this photo might have held a lot of sharpening. Another photo might not hold the sharpening quite as well so I don't want to include the sharpening as part of that preset black and white treatment. Split, toning and what else was there have been yet? And lunch corrections? Yeah, and let's go ahead, turn on our our lens corrections. So we turn on the things that we want to save in the photo. Maybe if I cropped it, I cropped it that that's not a good preset thing to include for your photos. So we turn everything on that we want and then you created, by the way, you can store it in different folders over here. So these are all folders that I've created, the user presets. One gets created the first time you make a preset inside a late room. That's where they all go. It's all store this and user presets. In fact, you know what? Look do this to make it easy. Um, let's go to new folder and I'll call this one creative life or created live life created. There we go. So it create create. So there we go. Okay, there's the new folder. There's a preset that's inside of it. So from here, if I come upon a different photo like that one that I could go over here and just click, and it applies that preset. And if you look at all the settings in here, all it did is take every single setting the way I said it in that last photo and just pasted it over onto this photo here. And if I didn't include it like detail, noticed that still said at 25 they didn't include that in the preset. So it's not changing the sharpening that we have over here. Go ahead and recent for a second. If I apply a preset, and this is this is the biggest thing that come to grips with. Very rarely are your presets going toe work exactly the right way out of the box. Remember these things where these things were just there to get you close? All right, you're always gonna have to go in and tweak it. So we go over here, I would say, you know, the biggest places is you're going to go to the basic panel, you know, And that high contrast, black and white. There's probably a little bit too dark for me. So I opened up the exposure a little bit on this one personally. You know, maybe the split toning is a little bit too high, so I'll bring down that saturation little bit. Or maybe a different color could be a colder don't so we can bring that down. But again, trying to be real world with it, which is you're never gonna click on a priest, and that's gonna be it for me. If that preset gives me an idea, it's Job is done. Just get me close and I'll tweak the little things to ah, to get there. All right, So that's Ah, that's one example of a preset if you ever want to change your preset. So let's say let's say I'm using this preset a lot, you know? Go ahead, click on it. And I'm using a lot of always going up here. I'm always increasing the exposure. What you can do is right click on it and choose update with current settings. And so we go ahead and click on that opens up that dialogue box click update, and now it's just updated that presets. So now the exposure is gonna always be plus 30 or whatever it waas so you're not stuck with it, you can duplicate it or you can update it and and create a brand new one. All right, next thing. Let's go ahead and hit. Reset on that one. Um, besides the creative aspect of presets, what I'll usually find, I start to make presets for our things I do over and over again. So I add a vignette to just about every photo. Let's just just my thing that I like to do I add a vignette every photo I mostly shoot outdoors. My thought process behind it is I'm shooting outdoors. I'm not shooting in a controlled lighting situation. Um, I very rarely do you know what we did this morning with the compositing and the backdrops? I'm usually the shooting mawr landscape, nature or people? No, just outside. More candid shots. So I have no control over the light in the studio. We control that, you know, hopefully you're you're lighting. And a lot of times in the studio, you you almost have an automatic vignette. Because most people when you're doing studio work, you're gonna light what you want a light in the photo. So that's the idea behind that. But when we get outside It's kind of my job to get you to see what I want you to see in the photo. I was there, I went up to Hurricane Ridge. I saw what I saw, but as you guys saw, that didn't come back in the photo, you know, But when I was I mean, that's what I saw when I was there, you know, just like it just looked cool that there was these little shafts of light on the mountain there. So it's my job as I get out there to bring that back to you guys the way that I saw. So to me, that's what a vignette does. A vignette teams everything and lets me lets me really get you guys to focus. And whoever looks at my photos Teoh focus in because I wasn't able to control the edges. So I had a vignette to just about everything. A Vigna. It's a good thing. It's a good, repeatable thing rather than you know, and I almost you almost always used the same settings come down here to effects. Take the amount slider to the left. I almost always crank back the midpoint and then crank up the feather. So if you look at what it's doing at a really strong, you know, there's Ah very small area in the middle that's going to stay lit on. And it's a very soft transition between the two. So for May, you know, I'm almost always going to do that. So why not go ahead here and call this then yet? And I'll go vignette like check none. Turn on my vignette, hit, create and then go over here and make a little bit darker at the plus and yet medium. Same thing. I notice I didn't put it in the right folder, create and then do the same thing, you know, make it a little bit darker and put in the folder. Hit, Create. So there it is. I didn't put in the folder for a very specific reason so that I could show you how you can move presets after the fact. If you believe that, then So down here you see, we're vignette Light showed up so I can actually take this and I can move it. Come on. There we go and drop it right over that folder. So vignette dark, light, medium. So these are the types of things like what I did. Oh yeah, I'll go through. I'll hit reset on this photo and I'll hit my I'll hit my shadows Highlights. Maybe warm it a little bit. Had some clarity contrast. And then, rather than even scrolling down just dark like medium yeah, that looks good. So very repeatable things that we do over and over again become a good Ah, good. Good use for that. Workflow wise, I don't I don't follow this as much, but I created these. I do this for some people that I teach that are just starting out like my mom just started after. I have a friend that just starts out inside a late room and they're in tow. Landscape photography. So rather than get bombarded with everything, if you're just starting out, that's actually not a bad place to still create presets. Just create preset for the stuff you use all the time. So let's take example, um, workflow. All right, so again, hit reset, start from scratch. So my workflow is, you know, white balance. I can experiment with a couple of different ones. Exposure brighter, darker, subtle toning, normal toning, HDR light. So I can start to bounce through some of these things and just almost work my way down again as something that's been using light room. I don't think that's a great way to go, because I don't think you're gonna work that way. But if you're just knew the light room, that's not a bad way to go. Remove the clutter and just kind of give me just remember and give me almost away to just work my way down through the photo, and it removes some of the settings that you might not use a lot. Okay, here we go. I go back up here very good. Looks a little bit better. Okay, so that's another way to use it. Yes, just a question on. Can you use multiple filters if you had the vignette ing one that you had apple that you created. Um, but when you created that that Praecis you only selected, um, the vin using area. So does that. Only when you select it as using it Does that only change the vignette ing area off the new photograph. Or does it alter everything in the new photo? It doesn't make sense. Yeah, I think humility. I think what you're asking is do presets stack start to accumulate? Here they stack on top of each other. So So the answer is they will accumulate if the newest one doesn't cancel out something that was below it. That makes sense. So if I've got multiple vignette settings, you take, take, take the workflow preset amounts. A good example. Each one of these presets only does one thing, so it'll let me go through and stack like I can keep clicking my way down this list because they each only all change one thing. So it will just It'll leave the setting before alone, and that will do shadows and vibrant or saturation whatever. And we'll keep adding to the photo now once I go to something like the vignette. So if I go down here to vignette light, medium dark, it's not necessarily stacking on each other. It's just changing the setting each time. Okay, now, if I had a preset that did, let's A as an example, let's have a preset that is going to bring my exposure down and my shadows uh, all right, and I turned, and I make this a preset so we'll go over here and test one exposure shadows and take a look at the settings minus 2 50 plus one. Okay, so hey, turn that off had created. Now let's say I make another preset that boost the saturation a little bit and maybe doesn't do as much to the shadows. So, plus I'll call this test to, and I'll put saturation in so had created. So let's hit, reset and watch. What happens if I had test one minus 2 50 plus 100. I hit test, too. See the exposure Say the same, but it replaced the shadows.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Tonal Black & White Preset
Sun Flare Glow Effect Preset

Ratings and Reviews

Beatriz Stollnitz
 

This class covers everything you need to know about Lightroom presets, from using someone else's to creating your own. Matt is a great instructor and explains each topic at a pace that ensures everyone can follow along.

Jeri
 

I really got a lot from this course and highly recommend it! Easy to understand!

Abigail Similien
 

Student Work

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