I have never used a LR Preset or Plug-in so in this area, I am a newbie. Is there a place to find a wide variety of Presets to import that are for creative purposes? I haven't been able to find what I am looking for. My goal is to find a Preset that will simulate wet plate collodion and possibly other effects of alterative processes. If I can't find one, I know I can make my own however it will take time. When doing this sort of thing, I'm not particularly fast.
Are the terms" Plugin" and" Preset" interchangeable?
Thanks in advance, Roberta
Hi Roberta,
I just had a rip around YouTube to see if anyone had posted a tutorial for creating that wetplate look. Didn't find one but I did find a few for Photoshop.
There are various companies that sell presets. There is one I found that comes up a lot. The cost is $12 USD. I'm wondering if you were to watch the Photoshop tutorials, you could make a pretty good edit in Lightroom.
If/when you do get something you like, it's pretty quick to create a preset.
Here's how:
In the Develop module in the right hand panel, you'll see Presets. If the arrow to the left of the word is pointing TO the word, click it to open up all the presets that ship with Lightroom.
Once you have edited a photo to a point you like, click the + sign to the right of the word Preset in that left hand panel. This opens the dialogue box where you save your new preset.
Choose Create a Preset
Next, give your preset a name
In the Group area, click the down arrow to the very right and create a new group (if you haven't already). I have groups like "Wedding Presets," Real Estate Presets," "Rodeo Presets," etc.. You can name your group whatever you find useful. Lightroom will save everything you've done to your image as a preset. The only things I make sure are unchecked for presets are spot removal and crop, because you usually won't want either of those to carry over.
One useful thing to use when creating presets is Virtual Copies. You can make one or several virtual copies of an image and try different edits on each to get to where you like the look. For instance, say you create two virtual copies of your image (so you'll have three identical images), you can do whatever edits, then select them all (CTRL + Click, or CMD + Click). Then press "C" on your keyboard to compare the images in one screen.