A Pack of Six Lightoom Presets

I’ve been working with Lightroom for almost a decade and over the years I’ve built up a large collection of presets that I use regularly in my work.

Often I’d create a new preset while editing from a particular shoot and I’d end up naming the presets after the location as an aide-memoire for myself. These names have stuck, hence Podgaric, Tjentiste, Glushka, Barbican, etc.

I have six presets for sale, downloadable as a zip file complete with some notes on how best to use them and some pitfalls to avoid along the way. These presets come as .xmp files so they will also be compatible with recent versions of Adobe Camera Raw.

1. Podgaric

Originally designed during one of my many trips across the Balkans, Podgaric has been tweaked over the years and is now my first choice when editing photographs of the forest. It brings some eeriness to gloomy conditions and sprinkles some extra magic when there are rays of sunshine. There’s a tweak to the tone curve to help lift the darkest corners, but the hard work is done by the HSL sliders that is then made to feel even more golden by the addition of an unexpected colour introduced in the colour grading.

2. Rocher de la Combe

Rocher de la Combe has a couple of fundamental goals: to give great skin tones and make them look fantastic when set against the greens of the forest where we spend much of our time. Among many adjustments, reds are tweaked, both in the HSL and Calibration, and the Tone Curve helps to smooth things out.

3. Tjentiste

Tjentiste loves textures, especially concrete. Another matted finish, the tone curve brings out surfaces and the colour grade brings a richness to the shadows.

Tjentiste appreciates being shifted to a colder colour temperature and overcast skies, but is equally at home in the sunshine.

4. Glushka

Glushka is a slightly heavier edit designed to balance out bright skies with dark walls, and desaturating the results slightly to give them some grit. There’s not much complexity to this one!

5. Barbican

Barbican is stronger, social media-friendly edit originally designed as part of my work for clothing brand Skochypstiks. This preset shifts your blues towards aqua while grabbing some highlights and dragging them back into service before they wander off into the ether.

6. Landmann Mono

Landmann Mono is a classic black and white conversion with just a hint of a tone that seems to be both cold and warm at the same time. Though quite strong, this is usually my starting point for most mono work as I can easily ease off with the blacks, and maybe add some grain to draw out more texture.