General edits before or after plug in?

[nudibranches]

Hi,

I'm just starting to play around with some plugins and was wondering if you immediately click the desired plug in as soon as you open in RAW and then do your adjustments (WB exposure, sharpening, tone curve etc) or do your overall adjustments first and then hit the preset?

Or is there no set rule for presets? Ie each one is different and there's no hard and fast "process"?

Many thanks,

AB

 

[Bruce J]

Hi,

I'm just starting to play around with some plugins and was wondering if you immediately click the desired plug in as soon as you open in RAW and then do your adjustments (WB exposure, sharpening, tone curve etc) or do your overall adjustments first and then hit the preset?

Or is there no set rule for presets? Ie each one is different and there's no hard and fast "process"?

Many thanks,

AB

I think the general rule would be to apply the preset anytime before you manually manipulate any of the adjustments that the preset changes. It doesn't make any sense to make manual tone adjustments and then apply a preset that changes the tone adjustments; it will just wipe out what you've already done. I believe most people use presets to get a particular look to an image and then tweak the adjustments manually, as required. On the other hand, if you use a preset for something that you don't adjust manually (sharpening, for example), then it doesn't matter when you apply it. Hope that helps.

By the way, plug-ins are not presets. Plug-ins are external programs that work with LR; presets are sets of stored LR instructions that can be applied from w/i LR.

Finally, it would be helpful for people attempting to answer your questions if you would fill out a signature for your messages containing information about your hardware, software, and photo equipment as others have done here. Use the 'User CP' button at the upper left of the interface.

Really finally, welcome to the forum. It's a great place to learn more about LR. Cheers,

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi AB, welcome to the forum!

To add to Bruce's great explanation, one other clarification - all Develop presets simply move the sliders to a new position, and whether it moves all sliders or just selected ones, depends on the preset itself.

 

[nudibranches]

thanks for the replies guys!!!