Lightroom presets for Landscapes

hashcake

hashcake

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Has anyone got any recomendations for Lightroom presets for landscapes?
I often find myself spending a lot of time tweaking photos and tbh I find it a laborious task.
I'm happy to buy presets if they are good, hopefully I can then just make minor adjustments and spend more time doing photography that post processing.
 
hashcake said:
I often find myself spending a lot of time tweaking photos and tbh I find it a laborious task.
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hashcake said:
I'm happy to buy presets if they are good
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The way I see things, you are trapped, doomed, going in this direction.

Presets are good only if applied to a similar set of values in any given
picture. When does it happen you take a shot quite similar to the one
that was used to create the said preset(s)?

PP is part of the fun and the learning process. Presets will NEVER learn
you how to "cook"… like buying a can of soup vs cooking one yourself!

Don't give up! :cool:
 
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Kodiak Qc said:
The way I see things, you are trapped, doomed, going in this direction.

Presets are good only if applied to a similar set of values in any given
picture. When does it happen you take a shot quite similar to the one
that was used to create the said preset(s)?

PP is part of the fun and the learning process. Presets will NEVER learn
you how to "cook"… it's like buying a can of soup vs cooking one yourself!

Don't give up! :cool:
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You do make a valid point but I buy cans of soup rather than making it :D
 
Why not create your own? That way you get the look you want, so when you have finished editing an image and you are happy with the look save a preset...
 
PhilH04 said:
Why not create your own?
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This good idea would not stop your learning progression and
would have the benefit to reduce your PP sessions duration. :)
 
hashcake said:
I often find myself spending a lot of time tweaking photos and tbh I find it a laborious task.
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Do you know what you want your picture to look like? Are you trying to polish something that's not that great to begin with? Have you considered the issue might be before pressing the shutter?

I used to use loads of presets - but ended up suffering preset-anxiety where you click through a bajillion different versions of Kodak-Tri-X emulation that all look pretty much the same and still can't decide which one to use. You can end up with too much choice - especially if purchasing - as sellers often seem to want to sell you a hundred different presets so they can justify charging for what is essentially a bunch of slider settings, or maybe (rarely) a custom dng profile. Filmbot presets are pretty good (and free - are you listening VSCO?!) film emulations which is the sole exception to my anti-paid-for-preset opinion. The majority of the Hipstamatic style presets are just funky split tones and vignettes, packaged with cool names and high prices.

I've now got my own half-dozen "starting point" presets - and even three funky split-tone & vignette ones! It's made my PP much quicker - because they're *my* presets and I like them, and because I'm not clicking through 40 different "retro/vintage" looks which took just as much time as creating something myself.

I get the soup analogy. But if you want your soup to stand out from everyone else's - you probably need to make it yourself.

tl;dr- Filmbot is ok. Making your own is best.
 
My LR "basic landscape adjust" preset is just that. Basic.

Sets camera profile, slight tweaks of clarity, curves and sharpening..... I might add extra graduated filters, sometimes adjust the HSL, and the white/black sliders for contrast.....

Five minutes of enjoyable work ;)
 
I've never really been a fan of presets, like others have mentioned, I think every photos needs to be edited in its own way with a pre-visualised idea of what you want to do with it.

For me, post processing is one of the best parts of photography, it really allows you to put your own artistic impression on a photograph.
 
Simon_Atkinson said:
post processing is one of the best parts of photography, it really allows you to put your own artistic impression on a photograph.
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… and that's cooking! :cool:
 
I have just received an e-mail from Adobe with 6 free landscape presets for LR.
 
I had a look at some once, but I would consider them of any use if you were trying to get several different looks from one image.

Otherwise there are too many variables. I agree with the comments made above re too many choices.
 
I consider myself quite artistic; I’ve been playing and programing keyboards since the age of 17.
Back in the day when I had racks of synths etc I was quite happy creating my own sounds from scratch. However, nowadays I use one master MIDI keyboard and many soft synths via a computer.
Now all I do is look for a preset sound then tweak it to what I want it to sound like.
I wouldn’t necessarily use a preset as it is, I’d probably tweak it to my needs / taste.
There was a time I would sit tweaking a drum sound for hours and looking back, I was quite anal about it.
My point is having a tool I can quickly tweak rather than spending too much time doing post processing.
 
hashcake said:
My point is having a tool I can quickly tweak rather than spending too much time doing post processing.
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I am a guitar player… or, should I say, a player of anything with strings
without a bow nor a keyboard. All these are acoustic, of course and the
only preset is: natural sound.

When it comes to PP, it is waaay less demanding that presets, IYWMO.
Everything is straight forwards … you only have to understand 6 functions
and correctly assess your images. Presets are zillions… you have to set a
choice (good luck in this!) and know the same 6 tweaking functions… back
to square one. :confused: o_O :jawdrop: Really? … why the detour? :banghead:
 
hashcake said:
My point is having a tool I can quickly tweak rather than spending too much time doing post processing.
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Makes sense to create your own presets, if you have images you have processed that you like the look of then create a preset from them, the people selling you presets don't have any magic bullet that does things that you yourself cannot do....

Create your own, you know what they are doing, they will match your style and you will save money.

It is easy, you have probably done a lot of the work already on previous images....
 
Shoot JPEG if you're really not bothered.

If you're spending more than a couple of minutes on a landscape shot then it isn't that good in the first place 99% of the time.
 
Craigus said:
Shoot JPEG if you're really not bothered.

If you're spending more than a couple of minutes on a landscape shot then it isn't that good in the first place 99% of the time.
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What a ridiculous thing to say, post processing for many is just as important as the actual photo taking. I'll spend hours processing an image to make it look the way I visualise in my minds eye.

Im not saying everyone should do that but to say that if you spend more than a few minutes on a photo then it isn't very good to start with is outrageous.
 
Craigus said:
Shoot JPEG if you're really not bothered.

If you're spending more than a couple of minutes on a landscape shot then it isn't that good in the first place 99% of the time.
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I'm not saying that I want to STOP doing PP, just ways to speed up the amount of time I spend doing it.
I've seen plenty of videos showing a dull and flat landscape and via PP it has made a dramatic change to the photo, the youtube video posted in here a few days ago is a prime example and he certainly spends more than 2 minutes on it.
 
Simon_Atkinson said:
What a ridiculous thing to say, post processing for many is just as important as the actual photo taking. I'll spend hours processing an image to make it look the way I visualise in my minds eye.

Im not saying everyone should do that but to say that if you spend more than a few minutes on a photo then it isn't very good to start with is outrageous.
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I’m guessing he was trying to say ‘make it as good as you can in camera’ that’s the way I read it. I like to take my time editing, see what works well and what doesn’t. But for me, that’s part of the fun.
 
gremlin16 said:
I’m guessing he was trying to say ‘make it as good as you can in camera’ that’s the way I read it.
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I think most people who are serious about their photography do the best they can to make it as good as they can in camera.
However, as we know, with RAW files the sky is the limit when it comes to PP.
I've seen some cracking photos over the years but I know the sky has been made to be more dramatic than it was when shot, there's a boost to colours etc.
I know I have done PP like that on landscapes which is fine but for me personally there has to be a line drawn between a photo and a piece of art.
I like HDR, even some of the more extreme HDR images can be nice but for me, that is a digitally manipulated image turned into art.
 
I recently brought some presets for food photography from Sleeklens

I enjoyed working with them as the presets were stackable and include brushes, more of a workflow than just a one click fix all.

They have workflow and presets for lots of different styles including landscapes which you might find useful.

I was impressed with the results I ended up with after a few clicks and tweek.
 
I've bought and/or got free presets from Photomorphis and Sleeklens. I've really enjoyed playing with them and I've learnt more about processing by unpicking them to a certain extent.

Quite often they overcook the image, but you can tweak them to your taste - and you could then save that as your own preset. In an instant you can see dramatically different results with very little effort. I don't use them very often now but sometimes it's fun to play!

I recently started experimenting with the different camera profiles in LR and they can have some quite different effects too.
 
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