• Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. You're also welcome to download our free Lightroom Quick Start eBooks and explore our other FAQ resources.
  • Dark mode now has a single preference for the whole site! It's a simple toggle switch in the bottom right-hand corner of any page. As it uses a cookie to store your preference, you may need to dismiss the cookie banner before you can see it. Any problems, please let us know!

Contrastly BF Sale - worth it?

Status
Not open for further replies.

GingeraMan

Amateur Photographer ~ 4 years experience
Joined
Mar 27, 2016
Messages
99
Location
Canberra, Australia
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Cloud Service
Contrastly presets are on sale now for $US50 - claiming that it normally costs $740 (which I am not sure is actually true?).

Is it worth it? The presets look great. I'm just wondering if this is in fact good value or what.
 
We may have covered this ground before but presets in general are not worth paying good money for...
As for the $740 value claim - this is just snake-oil salesmanship!

If you want to spend money on post-processing then buy resources that teach you how to do it properly...

Tony Jay
 
I am with Tony, no presets are worth purchasing.

Tim
 
Yeah I'm inclined to agree. I was about to click purchase and hand over nearly AU$100 of hard earned cash and then paused to consider. I already have a bucket-load of presets anyway. But the claim that they normally cost $740 kinda irked me, I'd like to see proof of that. Fine I'll give it a miss and focus on tutorials instead.
 
Developing your own presets is a whole different kettle of fish!

To be able to use your own presets predicates a particular shooting style with, usually, a particular approach to exposure.

To be able to shoot in a particular way and then apply a preset that expresses your own aesthetic and artistic preferences will result in a distinctive artistic style - which is the goal of every dedicated photographer, professional or amateur!

Tony Jay
 
Last edited:
Yeah I agree. I ended up collecting a mass of presets that I don't really use as I just always do my own think anyway.

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk
 
I do think this logic (which generally I agree with) may change a bit with the new profiles/presets available now based on LUT's. While one can create those yourself, they are much more involved and can be incredibly creative. I have not been shopping for them, but I wouldn't be surprised to start seeing more and more LUT based transformations for LR, much as one can find for video. I think someone already posted one that turns any image into that Obama "hope" red themed poster effect, it was very cool (regardless of your politics) and honestly I would not know where to start to create one, even though I sort of understand the actual mechanics in the LUT's. I expect (hope) there will be a lot of creativity coming in that arena, and I doubt it will all be free.
 
It was me who posted the Obama-look effect, and it's here (direct link to xmp file) if anyone wants it. It works well on many subjects - old cars, for example - but it wasn't that hard to create. PS can export adjustment layers as LUTs, and Adobe have documented how you bake a LUT into a profile using the ACR dialog box.

I agree things will change, but I'd still encourage people to be really cautious before parting with money for any presets. Don't believe the hype!

John
 
It was me who posted the Obama-look effect,.... but it wasn't that hard to create.

Art is rarely hard for the artist. ;)

I think what I'm really trying to say is this: old presets just moved sliders. The range of things people could do with that, while impressive, was still pretty simple stuff to do once you learned how LR works.

LUT transforms offer a lot more leverage, as they can map almost any color/tone to any other. While the mechanics of that are pretty simple, the possible effects -- all the combinations of things -- are substantially greater and offer an opportunity for more creativity. I even wonder if we won't see plugins that do active analysis of images, and create LUT profiles for transformation of them based on content.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I hope that Adobe opening this can of worms has encouraged a lot of creative birds to come feed on them.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top