Over the past few months I’ve spent more time delving deeper into Adobe Lightroom. One of the ways I’ve expanded my knowledge is to acquire presets from other photographers who offer them for free or for a modest price. A preset is a shortcut to settings a photographer uses to edit an image, so once he finds a formula he likes, he can save it as a preset to use in the future on other images.
In addition to the cool new looks you can see immediately just by clicking the presets, they’re a great way to study how a photographer uses Lightroom. While Lightroom is much less intensive than Adobe Photoshop, for instance, it’s still a pretty deep program with tons of tools. I like to think I’m pretty adept at Lightroom, and then I play with some new presets and see that I’ve probably just scratched the surface!
Today’s image is of Peppermint, my Australian Jack Russell, out in our backyard. We’re in the midst of the dull browns of winter, so I decided to play with some new presets I got from Trey Ratcliff’s Stuck In Customs. This one, titled Sunday Alone Time, added some warmth and brightness to the photo and created even more fluff to her coat. I tweaked Trey’s preset to my liking by changing a few of the sliders, toning down the highlights for one, and ended up here.
Presets are a great way to add some new variety to your editing and to help you learn programs such as Lightroom and Photoshop. Trey’s presets are often pretty radical for me, but the beauty of them is that they take me out of my comfort zone, which is a fun place to play. Trey is offering a collection of presets for free, so if you have Lightroom and want to give them a try, click here.
Tricia Booker Photography 
She looks terrific! Happy new year Tricia.
Thank you, Ruth, and Happy New Year to you as well!
Cool! Been a longtime Ps user, but have heard a lot of colleagues talking about Lr. Your post has renewed my interest in this.
Great! I really have enjoyed the transition to Lightroom. I had used primarily PS, but when I decided to organize my images with LR about four years ago I discovered the editing tools were amazing. I only use PS on about 20 percent of my images now as most are done just in LR with various presets and plugins.
Hmm. I’ll check it out. I think it’s part of my Adobe CC subscription. Just took some photos that might benefit from LR! Thanks again for your inspiring post!
That is a beautiful photo. You make LR sound a very desirable programme and worth a try, at the moment I use PS elements. I wonder if you could show us the original image before it went through the LR process?