I’ve been busy and I’m going to be busier! We took delivery of our new car last week (Bronco Sport) and have been busy with it, especially the learning how to work all of the bells and whistles this baby has! Considering the last vehicle was 18 years old to say that technology has advanced is being shy about it!
So we are busy planning things to drive to with it and will be on the road somewhere soon… I hope. But in the meantime this post is a bit about photography editing as in presets. Do you use them, do you like them, do you think they take away from “pure” photography or what are your thoughts about them?
I don’t always use them unless I am looking to quickly achieve a look on the image without having to go through a bunch of sliders in Lightroom. Even then, I don’t totally let a preset edit a photo all on its own, I almost always do a few tweaks before I’m satisfied.
Here we have an image of a Ring billed Gull passing very closely overhead. I still have a slight phobia about gulls; was traumatized as a child watching the movie The Birds and I haven’t trusted the feathered fiends since! Anyway, both images were edited in Lightroom using basic adjustments but I didn’t like how the gull looked in black and white so I started clicking on presets until I found one that looked interesting to me which is this “cinematic” edit included in Lightroom. It’s not a look that makes me go wow but it was one that gave a look to the gull that I rather liked.
What are your thoughts on these two edits and do you use presets any?
Teri 📷
Images by T.Dashfield Photography 
I rarely use presets. Sometimes I will find a preset effect that’s useful for a particular image. I make all my adjustments in camera raw and use PS to sign images then to reduce them for the web in a batch. I rarely do much more than that with PS these days.
Thanks, Tim.
An interesting edit, Amiga. I don’t use presets. At all. I use PS for cropping and automatic light, color and tone adjustment. If I like the adjustment I keep it. Otherwise no. I do some specific light adjustment when necessary but I can’t adjust the colours manually, since I’m slightly colour blind. (I can’t tell some browns from some greens. I do see all colours, but I suspect my reds are different form yours!)
Congratulations on the new car. Muchas Felicidades! Qué lo disfruten mucho… 👏🏻
I live in Lightroom, only drifting into PS as needed. Today I had to figure out how to use the wipers and headlights on the car LOL
I’m so used to PS, I couldn’t move to LR. To each his own.
Wipers? We too bought a new car. Our grandson, 5 yo had to tell us how to fix the settings on the fancy screen on the dashboard. 🤣
I refuse to ask any child or grandchild for help so I go straight to YouTube tutorials 🙂
LOL. I agree, but Little G was sooo happy and proud to teach us what he knew… You should have seen his face…
Congrats on your new ride! Vehicles today have too many bells and whistles to handle while driving. I’ve never used presets, it’s simpler for me to use without presets. I like the color version best. ☺️
Thanks, John. And there are so many bells and whistles to these things LOL
I mostly go with one of the presets of EasuHDR – it’s the fastest way.
Enjoy your Bronco. We’re also trying to figure out all the bells- especially all those different screens on the dashboard – and whistles of our new Mercedes.
I am enjoying my new baby and you are so right about all the screens! Enjoy your new car as well.
no, i dont use “presets.” i will adjust as I see fit. i like the second shot with the combo of color and b/w.
Thanks!
The presets worked fabulous here ~ well done!
Thank you.
I am partial to blue, but the grey background shows off the gull very nicely.