Top 5 reasons to add presets to your workflow
With presets being now widely sold by all types of photographers it seems like a must need to make them yourself or buy a set which suits your style. Here are my top 5 reasons to add presets to your workflow.
1.Speed/ save time
Your time as a photographer is very valuable, editing is such an important part of the process to delivering great images. However having a selection of Presets that you can rely on cuts down your edit per image probably as much as 90%! Thats not to call you a lazy photographer, it’s just optimising the tools Lightroom provides.
2. Consistency
Having a theme in your edits is so important, of course this isn’t just defined by your edits but also how you take your images. Having a selection of presets which can let you consistently edit doesn’t just engage well with your social media audience but also with your clients who like your consistent workflow. Allows clients to also have a consistent theme of images across they're website.
3. Creating a foundation to your edits
In my presets I’ve divided them into types of conditions I usually shoot when out on the road, tropical, cities, snow, adventure and desert. This allows me to quickly pick which presets I want to start off a foundation with.
Why isn’t adding the presets the finished product? As a professional photographer I use these as a base layer to really work into the details of the images, no image is complete with just one click.
There is some basic adjustment like brightness and temperature/tint which needs adjusting as no preset can predict the precise amount you need these. Adjusting these can majorly effect the outcome of look of image you’re going for.
You also always want to go into greater details with the brush and gradient tools. There is almost always areas which need refining with these tools, it’s those small details which add up to a better edit.
4. Batch editing
I don’t believe in batch editing in travel photography as each moment is different and needs care and attention. However batch editing is one of the most useful processes when it comes to presenting your work to a client who want to make selects. For example I had a client who I do hotel photoshoots for, we shoot in a week between 8000 to 10,000 images!
I narrow those down to about 500 of the best and batch edit those, as firstly the client know they aren’t the finished product but get a good understanding if they like the images or not. If you just left the images as a raw preview without any editing the client won’t be impressed with the images you gave them. As in the most part they don’t understand the power of raw images and editing.
5. Having too many presets can be a counterproductive.
While this might not be a “top” reason to use presets in your work flow, I think it’s an important one to consider. There is a lot of presets out on the market which you can purchase, I see a lot of Facebook ad’s for these and I’ve seen people selling up to 10,000 presets in a set…even 500 presets is way to many!
You just don’t need that many as it over saturates your Lightroom with too many options and many of them will be the same with little in the way of adjustments from the last one.
The most important job of a preset is to gain the colour palette your looking for, the smaller adjustments adding brushes, vignetting, grain, temperature/tint will define your style but thats not to mention you getting an incredible composition and image ;) Having to search through hundreds of presets will just slow down your workflow and will get rid of consistency.
I’ve created presets from the last 4 years of working on the road as a travel photographer for clients such as Nikon, Mercedes, American Express and many others. The Presets each come with tutorials and follow along Raws to make it more of an educational process. Click here to find out more information