Stop Using Lightroom Presets Until You've Learnt How To Edit!
Ahhhh, Lightroom presets. One thing that divides many photographers is on the use of presets, and whether you should or shouldn’t use them.
I sit firmly in the middle - I think presets are amazingly wonderful, when they are used the way that they were intended: to speed up your workflow, so you can edit quicker, or share a particular workflow with others. There’s no way I could get as much done is as little time as I do, without the use of presets! I use them all the time, and can’t imagine editing hundreds of photos without them.
Unfortunately, many people see presets as a substitute for learning how to edit, and that is NOT what I believe presets should be used for. I strongly believe that you should learn how to edit FIRST, get to know Lightroom inside out, then use presets as a way of getting more done in less time.
I’ve also bought a few preset packs over the years (when I was first starting out with editing and didn’t really know what I was doing) and some have been great, and others have been awful and a huge waste of money.
Spending your money on learning how to edit rather than on yet another set of presets will give you much more bang for your buck, because you’ll then be able to edit any photo, exactly how you want it, without relying on presets.
But let’s take a look at exactly WHY I think you should learn how to edit before using presets!
Presets can’t see and react to an image
I always think of presets as like AUTO for editing, because a preset simply can’t see and react to an image the way that you can, just like your camera can’t see and react to a scene to choose the right settings in AUTO.
All a preset can do is run through a set of pre-determined editing steps, and hope for the best. It can’t take into account the unique and varying tones and colours in your image, so a preset can’t see that it’s added too much contrast, or not enough contrast. It can’t tell whether the amount of saturation applied is making that green colour cast on your daughters skin worse, or blowing out the colours in your image.
Each photo you take is unique in terms of the light, the contrast, and the colour. Sure, photos taken the same location, at the same time, with the same light, and with the same subject won’t change much, if at all, in which case, you can simply edit one photo, and then apply those edits to the rest of those taken in the same session, but for everything else, each photo is unique.
That's why many presets look great on the sales page, but then don’t work the way you expect they will (unless your image happens to have the exact same tones and values the image that the preset-creator used!) That said, good preset creators will shy away from using certain panels, because they know it won’t transfer well.
That’s why you have to take at least some control of the editing process yourself, because only you can see and react to the unique lighting and colours of the image! A preset can get you some of the way there, and act as a base point for sure, but you need to know how to make changes when required.
In our free Lightroom class we show you the first three editing steps, and when you watch it, the first thing you’ll probably realise is how a preset can’t possibly hope to edit that way. A preset moves a slider to a pre-determined amount, but that amount could be too much, or too little for your particular photo.
(Want to see those editing steps? Sign up to our mailing list to watch the free Lightroom Classic masterclass here!)
You might not develop your own editing style
This could be a little bit of a tricky one, because some photographers have a preset that they love, and that forms the basis of their editing style.
But more often that not what tends to happen is that you try out a LOT of different presets, use one on this image, another on another, find one that you LOVE and use it all the time, slowly get bored of it, see another for sale that you love, use that, get bored…..try another one…..and before you know it you have a mish mash of images that look they have been editing by 20 different photographers (which in a way, they have!)
That’s all fine, and sometimes it’s a case of trying out several different presets, from different preset creators, until you find one that you love.
But that’s another why I think learning how to edit FIRST tends to help us create our own more style more easily, because you are editing not to a style, but to a set of pre-determined steps that you follow.
(Now you’ll note I’m saying steps, not edits - you’ll edit each photo differently, but you’ll run through the same steps, or as I like to think of it, editing questions, which is what gives you consistency, but allows you to edit to each images to unique parameters. That’s exactly what we teach you how to do in our Launch into Lightroom program!)
But once you have that, you CAN (and should) create a base preset which will ensure that your images have a consistent look and feel, or certain colour toning.
P.S I do also want to point out that style is way more than just how you edit your photos - it’s everything about the image, and the editing just reinforces that and keeps it cohesive!
You won’t learn how to edit
A lot of people think of editing as simply being a style, like light and airy, film-like, or dark and moody, but that’s most definitely not all editing is about!
Good editing is all about drawing your viewer into the image, leading their eye through the frame to what’s important, and creating a mood and feel, and of course, smoothing over any in-camera mistakes.
The problem with presets is that they are not teaching you how to do this, so your images will not look as good as they could. I can tell instantly when someone has used a preset and can’t edit, because the images look ‘cookie cutter’, and they haven’t done some of the important work on the image that wasn’t covered by the preset.
Believe me, there is a huge different between editing and simply slapping on a preset! When you truly learn how to edit your images, you're able to look at WHAT your image needs and WHY it needs it, before using the best tools to achieve that vision.
That’s why if you do buy presets, try to break down the parameters of that presets so you have a grasp of the process, and what each of the panels has done to your image. This will help you learn what can be done, but also so you know how and where to tweak them to be perfect!
It takes you out of the creative process
I personally think that photography is a tale of two halves - one side of the coin is what happens in camera, and the creative choices you make there, and the other side is how you edit that photo, and again, the creative choices you make there.
If all you ever do is use the same preset again and again and again to keep your “style” then you are missing out on 50% of the creative process. Plus there is so much fun to be had editing your photos when you know how to do it!
Some tips for using Presets!
As I said at the start of this post, I’m definitely not against presets, by any stretch of the imagination. I have a few presets that I’ve bought that I love (admittedly after tweaking them a bit to suit my style) and I’ve created my own range of presets which I use all the time. (I have one preset that I use on import to most of my photos that was tweaked from a bought preset, and I love it!)
We also give our Launch Into Lightroom students our preset pack, even though they’ll learn how to edit in the course, for two reasons - one, to help them speed up their editing and save them the time of creating all those presets from scratch, and also because as we use the same editing tools laid out in the course, our students know exactly how to tweak those presets where needed to suit their own photos.
Presets are a fantastic way of speeding up your workflow, or using as a base to get your image 75% of the way there with minimum fuss and time. But they are never the be and end all of your edit, which is why it’s important to learn how to edit FIRST, then use presets to speed up the editing steps in your own unique workflow.
Here’s how to presets effectively:
Realise that 99% of the time you’ll still need to make changes to your image. No preset will work on every image, but it may get you 75% there!
Don’t see a preset as a quick fix for your image, but rather as a way of speeding up the editing process, whilst still fulfilling your own unique creative vision.
Use presets as a learning tool - you can see exactly what edits a preset has made, which means you can learn from them! Go into the Tone Curve panel, the HSL panel, the detail panel etc, and see what the presets it’s done! Play with the edits and see what happens when you change things - playing is a wonderful way to learn.
Tweak a bought preset to make it your own, and then save it as a new uniquely yours preset!
Using presets alongside a strong editing foundation is an amazing way to get the best of both worlds.
Now, over to you!
If you want to get an idea of what goes into a full end to end editing workflow, as well as get some editing steps that tell you exactly how much to move a slider by for each image, then be sure to sign up to watch our free Lightroom Classic masterclass. It’s well worth the hour of your time I promise you!
