Over the last few years there has been an explosion of presets on the markets all designed to give your images a certain look with one click. So is that a form of cheating if there’s so little effort involved? And aren’t they just like Instagram filters?
Absolutely not in my book! And here’s why…
If you are new to photo editing the software can be a bit intimidating so presets are a great way to experiment and learn what works and what doesn’t with your images. Software such as Lightroom comes with lots of presets installed for you to try.
Most presets show you what’s been changed on the photo and that means you can tweak it to suit your own style or preferences. In the example below the preset I applied from the black and white set in Lightroom added more grain than I liked so I dialled it down till I was happy. Seeing what has been adjusted can help you see how you could edit your photos in the future.
In fact scrolling down the presets and seeing what sliders move is really interesting.
I really think that presets can also open up all sorts of creative possibilities – especially if the photo you got is a bit meh. The original of this image was definitely lacking contrast and colour as you can see – black and white really made the seed head stand out more and reflected the way I had seen it.
And sometimes we can get stuck in a rut with editing and don’t feel we got a result that we are really happy with.
Presets are other photographers ideas and talents that you can use to learn and develop so I don’t see them as cheating at all. They give you a start point – I rarely use a preset and don’t tweak them in some way.
Lots of the people who create presets offer freebie sample sets so you don’t need to buy lots. I especially like those from Kim Klassen and Matt Kloskowski.
But choose presets from those photographers whose work you like otherwise you are never going to get results that work for you.
Are you more of a smartphone shooter? Lightroom for mobile is free to download and will give you presets.
Are you a Snapseed user? Looks are essentially presets – as are the tools such as Vintage, Grainy film, Retrolux, Black and white and Noir. All of these an be tweaked both in the tool and then fine tuned with the Tune Image.
If you like emulating the look of old films have a look at the RNI film app too. Again once applied you can go in and tweak the settings until you’re happy.
So use presets to learn how to edit or use them to help you creatively – and of course have some fun doing it!