Posts Tagged ‘lightroom’

August 2nd, 2010 Black and White Lightroom Presets

Hey there!

I am an avid user of Adobe Lightroom and use almost exclusively it to process all of my images, but something I just never got around to learning was how to create and use my own presets.

There are a number of different types of presets, such as metadata presets, export presets and print presets, but today I want to mention develop presets and more specifically to share some that I have created for making black and white photos. Up until recently my opinion of presets was along the lines of “why would I want to use identical settings when so few photo’s are the same?”

That was until I caught this video on world-renowned Lightroom good-guy Matt Kloskowski’s web site Lightroom Killer Tips – http://lightroomkillertips.com/2010/video-anatomy-of-a-preset/

In this video Matt talks about how you can be selective in which settings you actually save as a preset and how they are most powerful when used only as a baseline for continued editing. For example, most photo’s will require different exposure adjustments from each other, but you still might want to apply the same saturation or curve to create a particular look to them (be warned I’m paraphrasing here!)

So I have been working on some basic presets which can be used in conjunction with each other  to build up an effect, from which you can then apply further unique settings to once the overall look and feel of the image has been established.

There are 4 presets in this Zip file which I would love you to download and try out for yourself… There is a baseline black and white conversion preset used best on portraits, which concentrates on lightening skin tones and adding a bit of overall contrast, then there are three Split Toning presets which can be applied after the base B&W preset and all give a slightly different feel to a portrait.

SteveArnoldPhoto- Tinted B&W presets <– download link

And here is a sample of what these look like when applied to a photo:

The original image with no presets applied

Now with the baseline Black and White preset applied

Black and White preset with the Warm preset applied on top

Now B&W plus my green/pink split tone preset

Finally, B&W plus my blue/yellow split toned preset

So now you know what i’ve been up to this past few days – please feel free to download and use my presets as they are, or play around with them and if you are like I was a few days ago, just use them to help understand what exactly is involved in creating your own. I really would reccommend you hit that link earlier in the post to the lightroom killer tips video about the anatomy of a preset as it was enough for me to start really thinking about how presets can become a useful part of my workflow.

Cheers!

January 14th, 2010 Lightroom Tip – Setting your Camera Calibration and changing your Default Settings

Lightroom’s Default Develop Settings:

If you are anything like me, then you have spent all too long wondering a couple of things about lightroom (I use version 2.2) regarding importing RAW files and the default settings that Lightroom applies to them before you begin working on editing them.

Firstly, I wondered how to CHANGE those default settings that Lightroom applies – for example, it always applies certain values to the Basic settings as follows:

Note that the white balance is always defaulted to “As Shot” meaning it takes the setting from the RAW file each time.

I have taken issue with this in the past because a lot of my shots were starting off with the shadows clipped due to the combination of settings that were automatically applied. I could not find anywhere in the menu options that this could be changed and have previously  read on many forums that it is not possible to do so.

Camera Calibration:

Now the second thing that I have been wondering is about camera calibration. Since changing from my Sony A200 to a Canon 5D MkII I have noticed that a whole new bunch of options have appeared in the profile dropdown menu in the Develop module. Read the rest of this entry »