Presets in Lightroom

One of the keys to working productively in Lightroom is using presets. The application comes installed with with a set of presets, such as one for converting photos from color to black-and-white or grayscale, but you'll want to start creating your own to fit your particular needs. Once I created a few presets for my workflow, I started processing photos faster and bringing about some uniformity in the color correction.

The process for making presets is about simple as it can ever be. Basically, you open up a photo in the Develop mode and make the kind of corrections and enhancements to a photo that you think could be applied to other photos. For instance you might create simple preset that applies Vignetting to photos. Or you might create two or three different presets that apply various exposure levels that you find yourself using.

Notice in the default set of presets that Adobe puts into the Lightroom, there are three different Tone Curve presets that apply different levels of contrast to a photo. All you have to do is place your cursor over one of the presets and you'll see what affect the selected preset will have on a selected image even before you apply it—a serious time saver. Also, there's a Zero'd preset at the bottom of the default set that reminds of what you photo looked liked before you applied any adjustments to it. Zero'd can make feel you're getting somewhere if you have crappy image that is improved in Lightroom with a view basic clicks.



Now I'm not saying Lightroom presets will magically do all the work for you on all your photos. Even after you apply a preset you will still have to do the work of fine tuning photos to get the look and feel your want. But the goal of Lightroom is to pretty much help you process lots of digital images within one application.

I have several items on my wishlist that I really think must be put in any future versions of Lightroom, but for now I'm thankful that version 1 has been released. I expect a lot of good things to come of this program.