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101 Free Lightroom Presets: Expand Your Creativity.

12 comments

Posted by Patrick on Nov 30, 2008 in Software

One of my favorite features in Lightroom are the presets. Lightroom comes installed with its own batch of presets and these are probably the most familiar to you. For one reason or another though, there are some folks out there who haven’t fully realized the true potential of presets and therefore haven’t explored Lightroom’s full potential as a time saving, workflow application.

First, before we go any further, you can make your own presets. Perform an action or series of actions in the develop panel and click the “plus” (+) sign right of the word preset atop the preset panel. Check the adjustments you want applied in the following dialog box and title it. That’s it. You just made a preset.

What to preset you ask? I like to break presets into two different categories. The first are adjustment presets. It may seem a little odd to make “exposure +1″ a preset, but often it is easier to just mouse over a number of exposure adjustments than using the slider. The way to set these adjustment presets up is to create them for the developments you typically make: white balance, exposure, clarity, vibrance, and curves for example. For each of these make a series of presets using incremental increases or decreases. For example “+10 clarity”, “+20 clarity”, “+30 clarity”, and so on. Organize them in folders (right click in the preset panel, select new folder). Once set up, you can quickly slide down the preset panel, clicking the appropriate adjustments as you go. Have a lens that always vignettes on you? Make a preset. Like your white balance on the warm side? Make some presets.

The next type of preset I call the creative type. These are the ones that make your photographs sing. There are no rules here, just develop your image in your own trademark way and set as a preset. Split tone your black and whites? Make a preset. Next time you have a batch of landscapes that you’d like to see in black and white, have them open in the library, take the spray paint can and choose the settings option. From there you can select your preset of choice in the settings panel, and spray paint your selections. Very nice, right?

There’s another option with presets, and that’s downloading them. From extensive adjustment and image correction presets to arsenals of creative presets, there are many, many options. Conveniently, we’ve provided a selection of some of the best ones, of all types, for your downloading pleasure. Use them as is, or as jumping off point, or in combination, whatever it takes to expand your creativity.

Investigate all of them and download the ones you want. To install a preset, simply right-click (control click) on the preset panel and choose import, then browse to your preset’s location. That’s it.

User submitted presets at the Adobe Exchange. Grab some or leave some.

A growing collection of presets from presetsheaven.com. An assortment of mostly creative presets.

Snow presets by deviantart member “=vert”.

Black and white and split tone presets by 640pixels.

Adjustment presets with a few creative ones for good measure at Camera Dojo.

OnOne’s One-Click WOW presets by Jack Davis. Corrective, workflow type presets. Can be a big time saver.

A nice collection of creative presets, by some familiar names, at lightroompresets.com.

Large collection of adjustment, corrective, and creative presets from Inside Lightroom.

A couple of cool creative presets from Really Japan’s Darkroom.

Creative type presets from Blixfoto.

Very cool creative presets from Camiel Schoonens.

Beautiful presets of the creative sort at x-equals.

Kelsey Smith’s collection of presets at flickr.

Matt Kloskowski’s lightroom presets at Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips.

A few presets from Steller Times.

Wet Chrome by =vert.

New York State of Mind by =vert.

A nice collection of creative presets from KRK Photography.

The ever-popular “300″ preset from Mike Lao.

That should be enough to keep you going for awhile. Keep in mind, a preset isn’t written in stone, and you can modify to your heart’s desire.

Also if you know of some other great presets, by all means share them in the comments.

Continue the Discussion

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12 Responses to “101 Free Lightroom Presets: Expand Your Creativity.”

  1. Gelay says:
    December 2, 2008 at 11:29 pm

    Thanks for this list. I have recently started using LR, so this is very helpful.

    reply
  2. |Brandon Oelling says:
    December 3, 2008 at 7:59 pm

    Thanks for the plug!

    |Brandon Oelling
    {x=}
    http://www.x-equals.com/blog/

    reply
  3. Patrick says:
    December 4, 2008 at 9:15 am

    Brandon,

    hey thanks for the very cool presets!

    reply
  4. Travis says:
    December 15, 2008 at 1:11 pm

    Thanks for the list!

    reply
  5. Patrick says:
    December 15, 2008 at 9:25 pm

    Hey, hope it helps.

    reply
  6. ReallyJapan says:
    February 22, 2009 at 2:17 am

    Thanks for the list! By the way, I’ve just released some new presets (for street photography at night with some.. cyberpunkish attitude ;) ), give them a look reallyjapan.com/blog/category/lightroom_presets/

    reply
  7. Patrick says:
    February 22, 2009 at 11:26 am

    You’re welcome, and i’ll try linking to your presets. Thanks!

    reply
  8. Philip Karklins says:
    August 1, 2009 at 9:34 pm

    Deece List.

    reply
  9. oraclebatgirl says:
    August 1, 2009 at 10:25 pm

    Thanks to PetaPixel on twitter I was turned on to this awesome listing! I can’t wait to use these lightroom presets. :)

    reply

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